PAT: The Moon has still got a lot of secrets it's keeping.
NATALIE: There's still so many questions locked up in these rocks.
It's exciting times just to be studying them.
DAVE: This is the only long-term information
that we have from the
surface of the Moon, are these data. There's there's just nothing else.
ERNIE: Where did all of this stuff come from? how did it form? What was the process?
Does it happen all the time across the universe? Or are we somehow unique, or at least unusual?
What does it all mean?
NARRATOR: I'm Katie Atkinson and this is NASA Explorers: Apollo,
where we tell stories about our Moon and the people who explore it.
In the 1960s and '70s twelve humans walked on the Moon over the
course of six Apollo missions. About 400,000 Americans worked behind the
scenes to get them there. There were also millions of people around the world who
listened, watched and celebrated alongside them. They were all explorers.
A quick note on why we're telling these stories right now: Over 60 percent of
Americans living today, myself included, weren't born yet or were too young to
remember the first Moon landings. They've never known a world where people
couldn't walk on the Moon. Now there's a new generation of explorers.
Explorers who will witness the first woman walk on the Moon and see the first human mission
to Mars. Some of us might even help get them there.
In the meantime, stories about where we've been connect us to where we're going.
What we learn now and in the future builds on what we learned in the
past, especially when it comes to understanding our Moon.
If you want to know what the Moon looks like up close, Ernie Wright is the person
to talk to. Even though he's never been there, he's visualized just about
every nook and cranny on the lunar surface, sometimes down to a few feet
He's one of NASA's resident experts on Moon data.
ERNIE: I work at the Scientific Visualization Studio at Goddard Space Flight Center. The studio uses data from
NASA missions to create animations and illustrations that explain that data.
NARRATOR: Data sonification is the sound equivalent of what Ernie does visually.
A chart lets you see data, a sonification lets you hear it. You can listen to a
data sonification over and over again and hear something new each time.
Every instrument, every sound means something. It's music and it's all based on data.
What you're about to hear is a musical representation of lunar science past-to-present.
What you'll hear in the sonification is the amount of scientific activity
associated with the Moon over time. Ernie will walk you through it.
ERNIE: The pitch of the melody is telling you sort of the amount of data that was returned
about the Moon over time.There are several instruments that are
establishing tempo. There's a clock sound that that tells you about the progress
of the months, and there are cymbals that go off to mark the times of launches.
During the Apollo era the pitch rises as we learn more and more about the Moon
and gather more data.
And then there's this period in the middle where it kind of falls, when we
weren't sending people and we weren't sending robotic missions. It falls off a little bit.
And then it starts to rise again to a crescendo in the modern era.
In the sonification there are these two peaks and the valley, but the other
thing to take from it is that there is a continuous note of exploration, that the
sound doesn't really go away.
The past and the present and the future are all connected, and you get that sense
when you're listening to it that while there are variations in our level of
interest, and in the amount of data that we're gathering at any particular time,
there's also a continuity, that once we went there we didn't want to stop.
I think what motivates us to answer, you know, the question of the Moon's origin,
or how it formed, is very basic. Because once we understand how the Moon
was formed we know a lot more about how the Earth was formed, we know about how
the solar system was formed. It's all to do with this question of where did we
come from? How did this happen? Where did all of this stuff come from?
How did it form? What was the process? Does it happen all the time
across the universe? Or are we somehow unique or at least unusual? What does it all mean?
NARRATOR: Answers to those big questions are
within reach thanks in part to modern-day exploration of our Moon.
The rising pitch at the end of that sonification, the crescendo, is a sign
that we're learning. We're exploring more. We're driving the pitch up into the future.
NARRATOR: Before the Apollo missions, we knew almost nothing about the Moon.
ERNIE: The state of our knowledge before Apollo was almost utter ignorance. We knew where it
would be in the sky, but only approximately. We didn't even know if it
was wet or dry. We didn't know what it was made of or how it related to the
Earth, how it formed. We had no idea. We didn't know what the craters were, and
there was really no way to know until we went there and sampled the surface and
saw it up close.
NARRATOR: During the Apollo era we learned so much about the Moon, but astronauts only visited a few spots
ERNIE: If you were exploring the Earth and you landed in six places near the equator,
you would know that a whole lot about the Earth.
So even after Apollo there was a great deal to learn, but we knew so
much more. We knew the right questions to ask, and so one of the motivations for
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, I think, was to answer some of those questions which
had been lingering since the Apollo era.
NARRATOR: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO,
is a NASA spacecraft that's been orbiting our Moon since 2009. LRO has
mapped the Moon like never before.
ERNIE: LRO is writing the lunar encyclopedia,
the lunar atlas. It's the thing that you go to first to look up all
kinds of information about the Moon.
NARRATOR: Thanks to LRO we've learned so much more
about our Moon. In 2017 scientists discovered that there's frost, frozen
water, at the Moon's poles. We've also observed that the Moon is
shrinking over time a result of it cooling since its formation billions of
years ago. Our knowledge of the Moon is now so much more nuanced than it was 50 years ago,
but NASA never stops learning. That really comes across in the data sonification.
Let's listen to it again now the Ernie has broken down what each sound means.
[clock ticking, music starts]
JFK: But why, some say, the Moon?
Why choose this as our goal?
ARCHIVAL: Five, four, three, two, one, zero.
ARCHIVAL: We have liftoff! We have liftoff!
[consecutive launch audio from Apollo missions]
JFK: And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain?
Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?
Why does Rice play Texas?
[astronauts and engineers speaking]
We choose to go to the Moon.
[astronauts speaking]
We choose to go to the Moon
[rocket sounds]
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy.
[astronauts laughing]
But because they are hard.
ASTRONAUT: Ok Houston, we have a problem here.
Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
ARMSTRONG: That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
Because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept.
One we are unwilling to postpone.
ARMSTRONG: Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.
And one we intend to win.
NARRATOR: In that version of the sonification, you heard tape from the archives,
like selections from JFK speaking and excerpts from Apollo mission audio.
This kind of historical data helps us understand the full impact of our
journey to the Moon Holly McEntire agrees. She's a NASA
archivist who believes that these stories remind us where we came from
and inspire us to keep looking forward.
HOLLY: I think probably what I love most about
being an archivist is just being able to capture the human experience within
those records. So sometimes we have records that are very black and white,
this is evidence of what happened, but my favorite part are the records that kind
of tell more of the human experience. So maybe they're a memo from one specific
person to another person, or maybe they're someone's personal photographs
that they took, or maybe it's an oral history. Those are the types of records
that really drive me because I really just love to hear the human take
on what happened.
NARRATOR: So in that spirit, we're asking you to help NASA tell the Apollo
story. What do you remember about the first Moon landing? Or what are you
looking forward to as NASA prepares to return to the Moon by 2024?
So far we've received hundreds of submissions from people all over the
world. This first memory comes to us from France. Here's what Elena remembers.
ELENA: Hello, NASA. I'm a retired American wildlife biologist living in France.
I was 23 years old when the first people walked on the Moon. I was living in Seattle,
Washington, and working as a legal secretary. At that time I was an avid fan
of the Star Trek series on television, and I still am.
I really wanted to see this historic event. I couldn't quite believe that it
wasn't a national holiday. But it wasn't, so I called in sick at my law firm to be
able to see it. At the time I didn't have a television, so my boyfriend John and I
had to go to a friend's house to watch it. The friend only had a small black-and-white
TV and he wasn't interested in watching it at all.
It was just John and I. But we got to watch it and it was thrilling. I'm a firm
supporter of the space program and I hope that we continue to peacefully
explore the universe to learn more about life, the universe and everything.Thank
you, NASA, for the opportunity to share in this great celebration and anniversary.
NARRATOR: Thank you, Elena, for sharing that story with us. We want you to send us your
Apollo memory. Visit nasa.gov/apollostories to learn more.
NOAH: You helped design how astronauts can stay alive and comfortable while working on the Moon.
DENIS: Science is something you test, you experiment, you get results. And that
modifies the way we look at the world.
ERNIE: Where did all of this stuff come from?
How did it form? What was the process? Does it happen all the time
across the universe? Or are we somehow unique, or at least unusual? What does it all mean?