• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

What Happened To The Flags And Objects That Were Left On The Moon?

July 27, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

It’s an iconic piece of imagery: an astronaut plonking down a flagpole with the Stars and Stripes on the lunar surface. But decades after those flags were first placed, many are curious to know – have they stood the test of time?

Advertisement

Keeping an eye on the flags on the Moon is easier said than done. While it would be pretty amazing if any old person could just grab a telescope and take a peek, that’s unfortunately not possible.

As astrophotographer Robert Reeves explains in a video, “The Moon is about a quarter million miles away. The smallest objects on the Moon that can be seen with any earthbound telescope, even the largest research telescope, are only a little under a mile across.”

“Since the flags left on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts are only about four feet [1.2 meters] wide, unfortunately, they’re a thousand times smaller than what we can spot from the Earth,” he continues. “Not even the powerful Hubble Space Telescope can see the flags.”

Thankfully, NASA has a rather handy solution to that problem – the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). As it says on the tin, this spacecraft orbits the Moon and keeps an eye on it, and in doing so, it can spot the shadows cast by the flags left on the surface below.

According to NASA, from photographs taken by the LRO in recent years, we can determine that the flags left by the Apollo 12, 16, and 17 missions still seem to be standing. Granted, it takes a bit of squinting to see (there’s a nice helpful arrow), but it’s a good indicator.

Orbital view of the Apollo 12 landing site from LRO taken in 2012 shows the shadow of the flag (at upper left), indicating that our flag is still there.

An image taken by the LRO in 2012 shows the flag left by Apollo 12 still standing.

Image credit: NASA

It’s not such good news for the first flag left by Apollo 11. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin has said that he spotted the flag getting knocked over during liftoff and that seems to be backed up by the LRO, which hasn’t been able to see it.

As for those left by Apollo 14 and 15 – status report? Inconclusive. The LRO can’t get a detailed enough look, although we wouldn’t be surprised if the one from 14 toppled over, as it apparently took “quite a beating” from the Lunar Module’s exhaust as it lifted off.

But there’s plenty of other stuff left on the Moon that we simply won’t know the fate of until humans return there – which might end up being a little later than originally anticipated given recent updates – because it’s just too small to see.

We can’t be sure, for example, of what’s happened to the 96 bags of human waste left on the Moon, although if it’s found and brought back to Earth for analysis, we imagine it’ll certainly make for one of the odder experiments those lucky scientists have ever conducted.

Advertisement

However, scientists can still make some educated guesses about other objects. Take the framed family photo left on the lunar surface by Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke; after 52 years exposed to the Sun, it’s likely been bleached.

Whether or not such mementos, flags, and poop should’ve been left in the first place, or should continue to be left – now that’s a whole other matter.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Sendoso nabs $100M as its corporate gifting platform passes 20,000 customers
  2. AI Predicts 90 Percent Of Crime Before It Happens, Creator Argues It Won’t Be Misused
  3. Watch Butterflies In The Amazon Drinking Turtle Tears
  4. Nuclear Fusion “Spark Plug” Created In New Technical Breakthrough

Source Link: What Happened To The Flags And Objects That Were Left On The Moon?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • The First Ever Full Asteroid History: From Its Doomed Discovery To Collecting Its Meteorites
  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • What Alternatives Are There To The Big Bang Model?
  • Magnetic Flip Seen Around First Photographed Black Hole Pushes “Models To The Limit”
  • Something Out Of Nothing: New Approach Mimics Matter Creation Using Superfluid Helium
  • Surströmming: Why Sweden’s Stinky Fermented Fish Smells So Bad (But People Still Eat It)
  • First-Ever Recording Of Black Hole Recoil Captured During Merger – And You Can Listen To It
  • The Moon Is Moving Away From Earth At A Rate Of About 3.8 Centimeters Per Year. Will It Ever Drift Apart?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version