What was left behind on the moon

The excess weight jettisoned before leaving the moon included some objects that were crucial to the Apollo 11 mission but had outlived their usefulness. Those objects shaped the mission's legacy, like the tube that carried the flag and the television camera that Armstrong and Aldrin had used to share their historic moment with more than half a billion humans watching from Earth , a late addition to the flight. Sampling tools like scoops and tongs were abandoned, their purpose served. The highest priority is getting all of those samples back, getting them back safely as well.

And then, of course, there's that human waste. Apollo 11 left behind four urine collection assemblies and four emesis bags. Revisiting the bags after their long years on the moon's surface could also help scientists understand how the harsh lunar environment would affect a human body, she said, turning them into after-the-fact experiments of a sort.

For now, scientists can't be sure about the condition of most of the other objects abandoned on the moon during the Apollo program, either. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted the shadows cast by lunar modules, however, so those at least must remain standing. Everything that NASA intended to send was space-hardened, designed to withstand the harsh environment, but only for the mission, not for decades. And all the extras that humans brought on their own are weaker.

But whatever the condition, they offer a very different perspective on the Apollo program than we may be used to considering, both archaeologists said. We take our culture with us, we take our ideas and our hopes and aspirations anywhere we go. Researchers can deduce the distance at any point in the orbit — which can range from about , to , miles between the Earth and its satellite — by measuring the time it takes for the laser beams to reach the moon and then return to Earth.

Let me throw the hammer! Much of this machinery crashed on the lunar service and are not operational. July 18, am Updated July 19, pm. Buzz Aldrin lands on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. It was important to lighten the load as they left the lunar surface.

In the Apollo missions that followed, many things were left on the Moon, adding up to an estimated , pounds of stuff. There are a total of 96 bags of human waste on the Moon. On the back it reads:. Charles Duke was the youngest person to walk on the Moon, aged 36 in Exposure to radiation from the sun has most likely bleached the photo completely white by this point, but the sentiment stays the same.

Best dad ever? He did take his kids to the Moon after all. Each lunar landing was marked by the planting of a flag, a tradition begun in by Armstrong and Aldrin during Apollo All future Apollo missions would follow suit and plant their own flags. Therefore the flags were constructed with extendable metal poles so that when the flags were unfurled they could be seen. One part of LCROSS, the Centaur stage, intentionally slammed into the surface to create a giant plume of dust so that the Shepherding stage could fly through and collect data to send back to Earth.

The data they sent back confirmed the presence of water. But far more interesting, at least from a human perspective, are all the other artifacts left in the lunar dust. The crewed Apollo missions only made six landings, but left a trove of trash.

The trouble with many maps of these artifacts—the above map included—is that most of the hundreds of bits and bobs have no specific known location. If you want to map them, you have to give them some default position in this instance, we assigned them the landing location for their respective Apollo mission. Many if not most of the artifacts were common to all the missions.

They nearly all left behind Portable Life Support Systems, which kept astronauts alive inside their spacesuits. Then there are the cameras, both still and video, used to transmit images back to Earth. And as any upscale camera owner knows, there are many lenses, cables, mounts, triggers, and handles to go along with each device. Each of the missions also took samples and performed scientific experiments on the surface. That means there are assorted magnetometers, seismic experiments, suprathermal ion detectors, and so on that stayed behind while the data they collected returned home.

Though the astronauts often tried their best not to poop or pee much on their journeys, some of them had to go, and they did so in various defecation collection devices and urine collection assemblies. And for emergencies, there were also emesis bags, which we wrote down in the colloquial: vomit bags. Not all of these little items are just sitting out on the surface.

Many of them are probably inside the various spacecraft modules left behind for the sake of having a lighter take-off from the moon.