Journey through the solar system. Episode 6. The Man and Moon

[Music] the moon had been photographed by a variety of spacecraft machines had landed on the moon to observe it now it was time for man to make ready to go there [Music] a [Music] I'm Larry Ross director of space programs at NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland Ohio and I'm your host for the sixth episode of our 13 programs called Journey Through the solar system now let's see parts of several NASA films which document both the science and the excitement of this Apollo lunar [Music] [Music] program [Music] the Moon is a different thing to each one of us I know my own impression is that it's a a vast lonely forbidding type existence or expans of nothing it looks rather like clouds clouds of P Stone and it certainly would not appear to be a very inviting place to to live or work scientific seant observations made on Apollo 8 were a practical potentially vital Gathering of scientific data taking the longer view of the scientific value of the mission comment was made by DR Leo Goldberg astronomer I believe the Apollo 8 mission will proved to be of enormous scientific importance as a vital step that had to be taken before Men actually land on the moon once they do the exploration of the moon is bound to give us crucial information on how the moon and other bodies in the solar system were formed do in a second I hope [Music] Roger M and we're there got two rer you saw the dock Charlie Master alarm everything looks snug Apollo 10 had a rugged flight plan it combined the features of the nine flights before it and was a full dress rehearsal for the infinitely complicated lunar Landing to follow astronauts Stafford young and cernon became the second group of three to see this site and they were the first with the potential to see it from a point 60 Mi closer than it appears in this [Music] scene it was a prime objective of Apollo 10 to duplicate the Apollo 11 flight plan in every way the timing spacecraft performance the performance of men and equipment on Earth as they disappeared behind the moon for the 11th time they were still together when they next appeared they were 50 ft apart flying formation John Young radioed his companions below you'll never know how big this thing gets when there ain't nobody in here but one guy and they answered you'll never know how small it looks when you're as far as we are here in the lunar environment as Apollo 9 had done in Earth's environment the crew was able to check out the lunar modules Landing radar navigation and guidance systems they were also proving Out The Descent rocket an engine which can be throttled like an ordinary [Applause] car the reflection in the window comes from the astronaut's sleeves as he took the pictures Among Us I you waving your way up the [Music] freeway the waterless Sea of Tranquility was their target and The Descent orbit swept them in lower and lower for the first pass over Landing site number two [Music] this is a preview of what the crew of the Apollo 11 will see when they head in for lunar Landing down two and a half forward forward that's 40 ft Down 2 and A2 picking up some dust four forward four forward drifting to the right a little [Applause] contact light okay engine stop we copy it down Eagle tanquility base here the eagle has [Music] landed through the window of the eagle Armstrong and Aldren see what no human eyes have ever seen before their spacecraft casts a long Shadow AC across the undisturbed dust of centuries the first footsteps on this strange new world must be taken cautiously the moon has only one sixth the gravity of Earth the nature of its surface was still unnown I'm going to step off the lamb now that's one small step for man one diant Leap [Music] forand in addition to collecting Rock and soil samples the Explorers leave behind a seismometer this highly sensitive device would send back valuable information on external meteoroid impacts as well as internal lunar movements [Music] [Laughter] [Music] a 100 prism laser reflector would help man to measure the exact distance distance from Earth to moon to an accuracy of 6 in these were the first of many experiments which will be taken to the Moon to provide man continuing and increasing knowledge about the moon and the vastness of space beyond ignition sequence start 6 5 4 3 2 1 Zer all engines running commit lift off Apollo 12 lifted off in the driving rain Pete Conrad reports the Y program is in Tower clear Conrad climbed out [Applause] first okay okay I'm out the PCH hey I'll tell you what we're parked next to what we're about 25 ft in front of the survey or crat they prepared an experiments package to be left on the moon an automated scientific station called alep that would send information to Earth for a year powered by a nuclear electric generator alep an acronym for Apollo lunar surface experiments package piece by piece they assemble the station okay got the solar wind deployed here the solar wind experiment to measure atomic particles thrown off by the Sun as they strike the moon a device to measure the moon's tenuous atmosphere a magnetometer to measure the lunar magnetic field which would later be found to be 10 to 20 times stronger than many scientists had expected a seismometer to measure physical properties of the crust and interior and the data station to collect the experiment Al measurements and transmit them to Earth with alep deployed Conrad and bean began collecting geological samples there's look at that son of a [Applause] gun 15 at one minus one minus one 6% fuel 10 ft minus one [Music] 8 F minus one contact and okay Houston the Falcon is on the plane at Hadley Roger Roger Falcon no denying that we had contact Houston the Handley base here tell those geologist in the back room to get ready cuz we've really got something for him Scott and Irwin were located on an ulating plane situated between the appenines and Hadley reil an area selected by the scientists as being one of the most geologically significant sites on the moon they would observe the layering of the lunar terrain most clearly seen in the formation 14 Mi to the South called Silver Spur this layering later to be observed in the mountains and the r gives scientists a direct look at the structure of the Moon and a deeper insight as to the significance of the collected samples 60 m above the Moon Al Warden orbited in the Command Module Endeavor operating experiments his observations adding to the wealth of scientific data already accumulated okay I'm looking right down on lro now and a very interesting thing it looks like a whole field of uh small Cinder cones stand here the detection of Cinder cones clearly of volcanic origin helped solve another element of the controversy about how much of the moon was formed by volcanoes and how much by meteoroid impact Warden was operating a series of experiments in the scientific instrument module these included a mapping camera to shoot lunar features and simultaneously the Starfield for accurate location of these features a panoramic camera a laser altimeter for accurate topographical mapping and a series of experiments to analyze the chemical makeup of the lunar crust in the estimate of a number of scientists this orbital research station would provide the most important information collected during the [Music] mission look at that W almost SE twinning in there guess what we just found I think we found what we came for Crystal and rock huh yes sir you better believe it to the untrained eye it looked like just another rock but its large crystals formed in pairs called twinning showed it to be a section of Primal lunar crust formed during the earliest history of the solar system not no yes it is if we could just get our shoulder under that their first stop was at the drill they had left during the second Eva this core tube was the deepest sample ever collected from the Moon perhaps the deepest we would ever get 8 and 1/2 ft beneath the surface cutting through 58 distinct layers this would not only tell us more about the lunar structure but contained in this soil were traces of particles emitted by the sun billions of years ago which would give us a clue to the early years of the solar system young set up an UltraViolet camera to provide the first astronomical observations from the Moon he took pictures of the Earth's upper atmosphere and magnetosphere and their interaction with the solar wind he also photographed the interstellar gas present throughout space and the ultraviolet Halos that appear around galaxies young placed a series of sensors in the soil then fired explosive charges mapping the lunar subsurface much as geologists on Earth use explosives to search for oil 4 3 2 1 five young used a portable instrument to measure the local magnetic field he would later record the most intense magnetic field ever found on the Moon far higher than scientists ever suspected with Duke acting as photographer and young as driver they put the Rover through a full test man you are really bouncing then one of the most spectacular discoveries of the mission look at the size of that pigy it is a pigy is it it may be further away than we think no it's not very it was just right Beyond you and we better press on for the big boulder okay we're headed that way you get the tongs uh John yep I carry the [Applause] rake that big black dot fantastic right here if if we could see to the bottom we could say for sure if this big black rock is right out of the bottom but uh my guess from the old photographs it probably is okay that sound like a good [Applause] guess powy it's obviously very uh very cohesive because it's it's the bottom of the core is not smooth it's very jaggedy and fragmental like they would sample several locations on this Eva but none would cause more excitement than the find of the crater called shorty oh hey there is orange soil well don't move it till I see it it's all over orange don't move it till I see it I've stirred it up with my feet hey it is I can see it from here it's orange that's the volcanic unplug silver fantastic sports fans it's trench time Jack that is really orange I think it's the most exciting we've come across uh since the beginning of the uh Apollo program I believe that it's going to be the most rewarding of all the findes on Apollo 99 proceeded 3 2 1 mission right away Houston back good 17 was the last Apollo mission to the moon now what did we learn after the data rocks lunar soil and photographs were returned a NASA film called the moon and emerging Planet begins to tell us the results in many respects our moon is one of the strangest bodies in the entire solar system of all the terrestrial or four innermost planets only Earth has such a large moon compared with the terrestrial planets the moon's density is much lower than we might have expected compared with Earth the chemistry is much different before the Apollo program three major theories arose to dominate scientists thinking about how the moon was formed one suggests that the moon split off from the earth and was flung into orbit around our planet a second theory suggests that the moon originated as a twin planet perhaps from materials left over from the formation of the Earth the third Theory holds that the moon was captured by the Earth's gravitational attraction having been formed somewhere else in the solar system there are problems with each Theory it has been suggested that it would be easier to explain our Moon's absence than its presence nevertheless from the data returned by the remarkable Apollo flights as well as unmanned missions we have learned a great deal about the moon's Evolution and early history it has become in a sense an emerging Planet unless it split off from another planet it must have originated as a tiny body perhaps one something like phobus one of the moons of the planet Mars and it grew by a process of accretion an accumulation of objects Drawn Together often in massive collisions by gravitational attraction these objects ranged from microscopic dust particles to asteroids by 4.6 billion years ago the moon had reached its present mentions during the last 10 to 100,000 years of this primeval bombardment the collisions may have generated so much heat that the entire outer shell of the Moon may have turned into a seething Global ocean of molten silicate materials once bombardment slowed the liquid shell began to cool solidifying over a period period of tens of millions of years crystals rich in calcium and aluminum formed they Rose to the surface and produced a mush which eventually solidified to become the dominant light colored material we call the highlands simultaneously dense crystals rich in magnesium and iron formed and sank to the bottom becoming a distinct dense layer there was now a lunar crust a product of millions of years of crystallization 100 to 300 million years later radioactive heating became extensive enough to melt materials in the Shell just beneath the crust the melting produced pockets of liquid giving rise to volcanic eruption s 4.4 to 4.3 billion years ago at the same time it seems that globules of molten material rich in metallic iron may have accumulated and they settled down into the center to form a core if 2 to 3% of the original Moon consisted of metallic iron the core could have a radius about 1/5 that of the whole globe such a differentiated moon with a crust a mattle and a core came as quite a surprise to many scientists who had expected the moon to be homogeneous with materials distributed more or less evenly throughout a molten core rich in iron could have functioned as a huge Dynamo much like the Earth's core and produced a magnetic field field this would explain the magnetic properties of many of the lunar rocks which have been returned by Apollo crew according to theoretical studies the Moon and Earth serve as very efficient Celestial vacuum cleaners and within less than 100 million years after their formation they should have swept up most objects in their vicinity surprisingly 600 million years after the formation or 1 half billion years later than we would have expected huge objects were still impacting on the moon helping produce the rugged surface some of them were as large as the state of Rhode Island the final ones blasted out the great circular basins we see on the moon's face today one of the final large impacts which we call the embrium event produced the circular feature which now serves as the right eye of of the man and the Moon by the time of the embrium impact the exterior of the Moon had cooled to depths well below the crust the interior by contrast began to warm up a result of natural radioactivity at a depth of 150 Mi perhaps 300 mil a Zone began to melt producing liquid silicate material that accumulated In Pockets the liquids then found their way to the surface sometimes following fractures in the crust sometimes forcing A Passage through solid layers one volcanic flow after another filled in the great basins produced by the large meteoroid impacts and became what G Alo galile called the lunar maria or Seas after some one and a half billion years major volcanic activity on the moon had come to an end except for a last gasp of volcanic activity originating deep in the lunar interior rare meteoroid impacts such as the one which produced the crater cernus and occasional small moonquakes the piece of the moon has been largely undisturbed for 3,000 million years we have thus learned a great deal about those early events and processes which produced the moon and it seems likely that similar events and processes were at work on our own Planet the Earth's early geologic records however have been largely obscured by extensive volcanic activity faulting folding erosion sedimentation and other geologic processes what few of the ancient records we do still have on Earth are being illuminated by our lunar studies it is clear that the moon had a violent and dynamic early history and that major geologic activity had come to an end by 3 billion years ago unlike the moon the Earth did not die indeed its geologic activity increased by a half billion years ago hard shelled animals had appeared on Earth and they left their fossils in rocks we find today it was only about 200 million years ago that the present continent split and began to drift apart a process which continues to this day in essence it is possible that the Earth and Moon had quite similar early histories in studying the moon we are taking our first closeup look through what has been called a window to the history of our solar [Music] system the moon has shown no evidence of Life still we wondered if there was life elsewhere than Earth in our solar system the next logical candidate for the search was Mars fourth planet from the Sun during our next episode we will examine Mars from space this is Larry Ross saying goodbye from NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland 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