TOP-11 Rare facts about the first landing on the Moon

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and the whole world gasped. Since then, we have not stopped gasping and groaning, learning new facts about that flight.

We know a lot about the legendary flight of Apollo 11, but a lot of interesting details have remained behind the scenes of the lunar race. How much did the Apollo 11 flight cost, how does moon dust smell and how dangerous it is, why were the astronauts taught to walk sideways and what nearly exploded after the lunar landing? "Popular Mechanics" will tell about these and many other little-known, but damn interesting facts related to the first manned landing on the moon.

The moon smells like burning

The big question before the NASA team was: what will the surface of the moon be like? Will the lander feet touch a hard surface or sink into something soft? The good news was that the surface was actually quite hard, but the real surprise was that the moon had its own scent.

NASA Aldrin after collecting a sample of lunar soil. Pay attention, under his feet there is a scoop-net with a long handle.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin returned to the lunar module, the lunar mud seeped into the cabin and began to smell strong. The astronauts reported that it was the smell of something burnt, like wet ash from a fireplace.

The cost of a flight to the moon flew into a pretty penny

In total, the States spent more than $ 25 billion on the Apollo program. Decent, but in 1960s prices. In terms of today's money, this is more than $ 150 billion - that's really decent.

NASA Saturn 5 booster with Apollo 11 during launch. Millions of dollars burn so brightly …

Only Apollo 11 itself cost the Americans 355 million dollars, and another 185 million had to be paid for the Saturn 5 launch vehicle. Further on the little things: the command module "Columbia", in which Michael Collins remained while Armstrong and Aldrin roamed the moon ($ 55 million), the lunar module "Eagle" ($ 40 million).

The USSR carefully concealed attempts to get to the Moon first

Not only the States were going to demonstrate their dominance by landing people on the moon, the Soviet Union was also preparing for this feat. From 1967 to 1969, the USSR launched a lot of spacecraft - "Kosmos", "Probes", "Soyuz" and "Luna". The most successful of these turned out to be Zond-5, which became the first spacecraft in the world to return photographic film taken from the Moon to Earth.

True, as soon as the American astronauts set foot on its surface first, the Soviets lost interest and minimized their efforts in this direction.

At first, our country needed secrecy so that, God forbid, no one would catch up with us. But then, when the States did catch up with us and overtook us, we had to maintain secrecy so that no one would know that we were beaten.

Astronauts trained, literally walking sideways

How do you prepare to send someone to a place no one has ever been? To do this, NASA in the 1960s created a series of simulators that simulate what astronauts might encounter in reality.

NASA: Astronauts Prepared for Lunar Gravity in Exotic Pose

Aldrin practiced collecting samples on artificial moon landscapes indoors. Armstrong trained in piloting on a training simulator in Houston. And to simulate walking in the atmosphere with the gravity of the moon, astronauts, dressed in spacesuits, were hung sideways on special cables and forced to walk for hours on the walls of the Langley Research Center.

20 years could not find a photo of Armstrong on the moon

After that flight, it was officially believed that there was not a single photo of Neil Armstrong taken on the moon while leaving the ship, since he had the camera all the time.

NASA Here it is, the only snapshot of Neil Armstrong on the Moon that could not be found for 20 years. By the way, later NASA decided to make red stripes on the commander's spacesuit so that the astronauts could be easily distinguished.

However, in 1987, NASA historians managed to make a discovery: there is still a picture, but it is the only one. Edwin Aldrin took the camera, which Armstrong had placed on the open panel of the lunar module's cargo bay before collecting rock samples, and shot a panorama. The photo with Armstrong became part of this panorama.

Buzz Aldrin received communion on the moon

When Eagle landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had to wait a bit before embarking on their first lunar walk. Aldrin, as an elder in the Presbyterian Church, made good use of his time and did things that no other man had ever done. He took part in the first religious sacrament ever performed on the moon - the rite of Christian communion. Armstrong declined to participate.

Aldrin had originally hoped for a live radio broadcast, but at the last moment NASA dropped the idea. This is all due to a lawsuit initiated by militant atheist Madaline Murray O'Hare, who filed a lawsuit against the agency in connection with the fact that the Apollo 8 crew on Christmas Eve 1968 in lunar orbit read the first chapter of Genesis live on air.

Scientists were terribly afraid of space microbes

Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were stuck in a biological defense quarantine upon arrival. Since humans had never been to the moon before, NASA scientists couldn't be sure that some deadly space plague hadn't come along with the astronauts.

NASA Upon arrival on Earth, the Apollo 11 crew communicated with the world only through the glass of the special van. Even with President Nixon.

As soon as their capsule splashed down in the Pacific on July 24, 1969, the trio were sent to a mobile quarantine van, which was taken to NASA's Lunar Reception Laboratory in Houston, where the team remained until August 10, 1969.

Film cassettes and sample containers were less fortunate. The films were sterilized in an autoclave for several hours, after which they were sent to a darkroom. There, one of the photographers accidentally took the cassette with his bare hands (just the one that the astronauts dropped on the moon) and was taken out in the moon dust. He had to take a five-minute disinfectant shower.

NASA Here it is, the building of the Lunar Reception Laboratory, where the crew spent 18 days of quarantine.

The sample containers were double sterilized: first with ultraviolet light, then with peracetic acid. Then they were rinsed with sterile water and dried with nitrogen. The opening of the containers was delayed due to unstable pressure in the vacuum zone.

Experts suspected a small leak in one of the gloves that could be used to manipulate the samples. Less than a week later, the gloves were torn. Most of the lunar samples were exposed to the earth's atmosphere, and two of the technicians had to be quarantined. Then four more technicians were quarantined. In total, more than two dozen people have been quarantined.

President Nixon Prepared Before Mission Failure

As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin jump across the moon's surface, Richard Nixon's anxiety peaked. After all, if something goes wrong, he will have to make excuses to ordinary Americans for billions of wasted tax dollars.

The employees of the 37th President of the United States prepared a statement that he was supposed to read in case the worst happened. Even the NASA staff chaplain was on a low start. Watching the Apollo 11 adventures live, the President could only hope he didn't have to read that statement. As we know, it was never necessary to read it. The mission failure speech was not released until 30 years later.

Astronauts landed in the wrong place

When the lunar module Eagle, with Armstrong and Aldrin aboard, undocked from the command module Columbia, in which Collins remained, the residual pressure inside the tunnel connecting the two spaceships was not sufficiently relieved. So "Eagle" received a small, but still an additional impetus.

Nine minutes before landing, Armstrong realized that the Eagle would fly past the planned landing site. According to astronauts' estimates, they should have missed by about five kilometers (in fact, they missed by six).

NASA Lunar module "Eagle" after undocking from the command module "Columbia"

But the search for a new safe landing site is not so bad. Due to the overload, the Eagle's on-board computer distracted astronauts with constant emergency signals, and radio communications with the Mission Control Center were patchy. Fortunately, since the airborne system alarm was intermittent, the MCC considered the risk of overload low and gave the go-ahead to land.

When the Eagle had only 30 seconds of fuel left, Armstrong gently guided the lunar module towards the makeshift landing pad: “Houston, says Tranquility Base. The Eagle sat down."

Lunar module nearly exploded

As the adrenaline dropped and the astronauts completed their missions, another problem was brewing. Although the Eagle's landing engine had already been turned off, sensors recorded an increase in pressure in its fuel line. This could only mean one thing: an ice plug formed in the system, and the accumulated fuel vapors were heated from the unit that had not yet cooled down.

NASA considered the situation critical, and if the increase in pressure is not eliminated, the "Eagle" can explode. However, before the instructions for venting the fuel system were given to Armstrong and Aldrin, the ice plug melted, the pressure returned to normal, and the problem went away on its own.

The danger of moon dust

Created billions of years ago by meteorite impacts, the moon lacks processes that could give debris and tiny soil particles smoother shapes. The astronauts have discovered that abrasive dust is much more than a nuisance.

NASA Aldrin's boot imprint, which literally inherited in the history of astronautics.

In later missions after Apollo 11 with longer exits to the lunar surface, there were reports that dust particles penetrated the interior of the lunar module, covered the visors of helmets, and caused zippers to wedge. Moon dust penetrated even through the layers of the protective suit material.