Christopher Collins and Michael Healy – sixth graders in Huber Street School – said they have no desire to go to the moon. Both claim the mission would be a little too risky, and neither boy has aspirations to sit on top of a 40-story high Saturn rocket waiting for its kerosene to ignite.
But on May 7, they and other students at their school had the moon come to them with the delivery of a package from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s program for a study of the moon.
The first moon mission in 1969 brought about 48.5 pounds of rock to be studied at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston. In the six successful moon missions (out of nine) between 1969 and 1972, astronauts brought slightly less than 400 pounds total.
“There is a lot of security surrounding this,” said Huber Street School’s Science teacher Jules Rotella, noting that “moon rock” might be a bit of an exaggeration with “sliver” more appropriate. Young future scientists will use the rocks as part of their studies on interstellar objects.
Geologists – scientists who study the formation, structure, history and processes that change on earth and other planetary bodies – have spent years studying the similarities and differences between stones brought back via the Apollo program and rocks found here on earth. The moon’s surface, these studies revealed, is made up largely by igneous rock – rock formed as a result of volcanic-like activity.
Rotella said NASA has provided the school with a program of study that will allow the kids to do their own research, and the package provides a number of lunar samples, a teachers’ kit, a slide set, and various videos. Rotella said students will study the rock slivers and soil. In one case, students will use colored sand to simulate how impacts from meteors and asteroids might have caused the craters on the moon.
“The layers of various colors will show how deeply the impact is felt,” Rotella said.
Another study, done in connection with drawing, had various students designing their own moon buggy for getting around on the moon. The original Apollo vehicle folded a moon buggy up inside the Apollo landing craft, and it had wire wheels rather than inflatable tires.
Huber Street Students, however, had designs of their own, as part of their studies of art and the moon. While the school doesn’t have facilities to build the models the kids designed, the program did include rules for design as well as a diagram of the vehicle used by the Apollo astronauts. Each student was asked to draw the vehicle and provide a means of propulsion, and determine how the vehicle did on the variety of surfaces the craft would encounter on the moon.
“My buggy can go into space,” said sixth grader Larissa Impreveduto. “It can rotate and can also go over the moon’s surface.”
Impreveduto said she has no desire to go into space, but has a good imagination that allowed her to design her space buggy.
Casey Luccente, however, said he wouldn’t want to go into space either, but thought the moon project was “pretty cool,” and said she learned a lot from the program.
“I didn’t know how we got to the moon,” she said.
Collins and Healy both had designs to offer as well, both capable of rising off the surface of the moon.
“My buggy flies,” Healy said.
“Mine is similar,” said Collins. “But mine has sharp wheels to get over the moon stones.”
Were the moon missions faked?
Science teacher Jules Rotella said that some of the children in his classes at the Huber Street School have been concerned about television programs being aired on the Fox network that questioned whether or not the United States faked the moon missions.
“While my sixth graders don’t believe the program, some of my fourth graders are having a hard time with it,” he said.
The rumors – which have recently received an airing on the Learning Channel and other cable television channels – first surfaced in the 1970s after the United States gave up its moon program in favor of the space shuttles. UFO cultists – unable to believe the budgetary reasons given for discontinuing the moon program – began to speculate as to other possible alternatives for giving up such a venture.
Two books published in the 1990s allegedly produced proof of the faking, although critics of the film and the books have discounted the arguments. But the Fox program, Rotella said, made many of his students doubt if America actually reached the moon.
Critics claim that the evidence in support of a faked moon landing did not stand up to analysis: such as why the American flag fluttered when there was no air, and why astronauts were not vaporized by the extreme heat when lack of air on the moon made traditional air conditioning impossible
Unanswered questions
The fact is, the missions to the moon left many serious questions unanswered, questions nearly as fantastic as the alien theories, and questions we needed to return to the moon to answer. The study of the surface of the moon showed the age of the stone and soil varied dramatically, leaving many scientists confused as to the origin of the moon. Did it come from another place and get trapped by the Earth’s gravity? Did it form side by side with the Earth when the solar system was created? Or was it ripped out from the Earth as the result of an asteroid striking our planet?
Astronauts landing on the moon noted that sonar recorded a ringing sound when the lander hit ground, leading some to speculate the moon might be hollow. Some of the dark areas we can see from Earth turned out to have a glass-like quality caused by extreme heat. The moon also has a higher than expected level of radioactivity, and a magnetism few scientist on Earth can explain.
In the last few years, scientists studying the moon verified evidence of water vapor on the moon, something Apollo astronauts recorded during their visits but most scientists discounted at the time. The moon’s surface was supposed to be a million times dryer than the Gobi Desert.
Rotella said he and the students will tackle as many questions about the moon as possible during the two weeks. “I hope to convince my students that America’s greatest achievement really did take place and that there is much more to learn,” he said.