[ad_1]
SPRINGFIELD, MONTH It's been almost half a century now that the United States has launched a man on the moon.
But Monday, at the Springfield Discovery Center, an interactive science museum, you can see some tangible remnants of Apollo missions that have redefined our knowledge of the moon.
At first glance, there is really nothing to be excited about. The dozens of samples are divided into lunar samples and meteorite samples and are housed in what looks like oversized petri dishes.
Yet when you consider that their content comes from more than 239,000 kilometers, in a place that everyone on our planet has contemplated with wonder, you must admit that it's a pretty cool thing to hold in your hands.
And by the way, the Apollo program that brought these stones back to earth cost over $ 25 billion and included some of the most amazing technological breakthroughs of our time. They have presented the largest and most powerful rockets in the world yet. The Saturn V rockets that propelled astronauts to the Moon measured more than 90 meters, which is larger than the Statue of Liberty.
And getting to the moon is still considered one of the greatest achievements of humanity.
Only 12 men and six spaceflights collected 842 books. lunar rocks and soil, some of which are now on loan at the Springfield Downtown Discovery Center where, on Monday, 40 fifth-graders from the Academy of Exploration of the public school system were the first to get a closer look of the moon and meteorite samples.
"I dream of holding rocks from the moon since I was three years old," said Dom Fraraccio, a fifth-year student of the Academy of Exploration. "And today, my dream has come true."
Moon samples must be sealed to be stored in clear Lucite discs. And as they are priceless, security personnel are present at all times.
"We have to store them at the police station at night," an instructor told her students, explaining how having lunar rocks in the room was a big deal.
The research gathered from these samples has changed our ideas about the creation of the moon. Originally, it was thought that these are space debris captured by the Earth in its orbit. But the lunar rocks contained minerals present on the Earth, which led to the widespread theory that "the moon formed because of the impact of a giant asteroid
that strikes the earth, "said Rob Blevins, executive director of the Discovery Center. Because he has an iron core, just like the Earth. So parts of the earth are part of the moon. "
All Apollo lunar landings took place in just over three years, from July 1969 to December 1972, and no human beings returned in the next 46 years.
On Monday, the class witnessed the successful landing of an aircraft called "Insight" on Mars, where it will become the first lander to get data from inside the Martian surface.
Another source of inspiration for these young minds.
"They can look at something in the sky and see something that humans have brought back," said Blevins. "And see if we want to go to Mars with a human being, we can do it."
[ad_2]
Source link
