LUNAR EXPLORATION
The lunar-exploration program that began in 1964 with unmanned craft and culminated in six manned Apollo landings between 1969 and 1972 has provided us with a priceless legacy of lunar materials and data. Lunar rocks have been collected from nine different locations, six by the United States and three by the Soviet Union (the most recent being August, 1976). The samples returned amount to more than 2000 individual samples, weighing about 382 kilograms (843 pounds).
Five instrument packages were left on the lunar surface, the last surviving one operating until October 1977. the seismometers in these packages detected meteoric impacts and many lunar quakes during their operating life span of about 8 years.
The Apollo program also carried out an extensive effort to photograph and analyze the lunar surface. The result is maps of some parts of the moon better than those of some areas on earth. X-ray and radioactivity studies from orbit have yielded estimates of the chemical composition of about one-quarter of the lunar surface, an area about the size of the United States and Mexico together.
Posted in Astronomy
