Lunar science in Physics Today

The Apollo 11 landing was both an extraordinary human drama and a pivotal moment for science and technology. In the lead-up to the July 1969 event, Physics Today contributors were excited about opportunities for new research projects and elated by the prospect of receiving more scientific funding and support from President Richard Nixon. In the years that followed, physicists in our pages enthused over the Apollo missions’ scientific return on investment and speculated about ambitious endeavors to come. The magazine’s interest in the Moon did not end with the final Apollo landing; Physics Today has continued to cover new findings from lunar rovers, satellites, and Earthbound observation.

April 1964: Future scientific spacecraft

Five years before the Moon landing, American, British, and Soviet satellites crowded the sky as they observed Earth and collected spectroscopic data about the Sun and stars without interference from Earth’s atmosphere. In this 1964 article, TRW Space Technology Laboratories researchers Thomas Branigan and Donald LeGalley write that satellites are the unsung heroes of the Space Age. The authors also detail upcoming projects, including a biosatellite designed to carry animals to space.

October 1964: Space experiments

In a brief notice, Physics Today reports that NASA is soliciting proposals for experiments that astronauts could perform on Gemini and Apollo missions.

February 1969: New leaders will overhaul US science policy for the 1970s

In the months leading up to the Moon landing, the future seemed bright for American research. This article notes that with the help of Apollo, scientists had the president’s ear: Richard Nixon had assembled two task forces to discuss “decisions he could expect to face in the field of science,” and Nixon’s science adviser, former Caltech president Lee DuBridge, was calling for basic research funding to increase steadily every year. Though four years later Nixon would become the first president to fire his entire science advisory committee , the article cheerily predicts that after Apollo, the administration “should have little trouble gathering persuasive arguments on how more money could be well spent!”

September 1969: Apollo 11 success brings astronomy down to Earth

Physics Today‘s first post-Apollo 11 news article argues that the moonwalk has made astronomy a laboratory science. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins brought back a host of lunar samples that scientists couldn’t wait to subject to hundreds of experiments. Spectral, thermal, and electron-microscope tests awaited both dirt from the Moon’s surface and particles from outside Earth’s atmosphere captured by a solar wind detector. What Armstrong and Aldrin left on the Moon was also important: a retroreflector that allowed Earthbound scientists to test general relativity, and a seismometer that sat listening for moonquakes (see also the article by Brad Jolliff and Mark Robinson, Physics Today, July 2019, page 44 ).

February 1970: The case for space exploration

Arthur C. Clarke’s 1968 book The Promise of Space, written in the midst of the Apollo program but before the lunar landings, offered an ambitious and optimistic vision for humanity’s future in space. The noted science fiction writer also included a wealth of technical information and counterarguments for common objections to space exploration. Unconvinced by Clarke’s romanticism, Michigan State University materials scientist Donald Montgomery makes a more pragmatic argument for winning the Space Race in this review of Clarke’s book. He says that the space program will advance “a complex set of goals,” including military security, economic growth, and new knowledge that will result in a “diminution of superstition and fear.”

March 1974: The interior of the Moon

Less than five years after Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s historic steps, the evidence provided by lunar samples and instruments on the Moon’s surface has already solved scores of mysteries about Earth’s neighbor, writes Caltech geophysicist Don Anderson in a 1974 summary of Apollo’s major findings. At the same time, planetary scientists still have a lot of work to do: “The maneuvering room for speculation on lunar origin has scarcely diminished,” he writes.

November 2006: Build astronomical observatories on the Moon?

Because the Moon has no atmosphere, a telescope placed on its surface would be able to observe the cosmos sans interference at any wavelength. Installing a lunar telescope is tantalizingly possible, but is it worth the cost? In 2006 Physics Today commissioned a pair of dueling essays to debate the matter. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center geophysicist Paul Lowman writes that astronomers should take advantage of the current golden age and establish a robotic observatory in the Grimaldi Crater. Research scientist Daniel Lester from the University of Texas at Austin counters that even if astronauts could overcome the challenges of installing an observatory, highly abrasive and electrostatically adhesive lunar dust would decrease the instruments’ already marginal scientific benefit.

June 2017: The new Moon

New technology allows scientists to scrutinize the Moon at a level of precision and rigor that was impossible during the Space Race, writes Johns Hopkins planetary geologist Brett Denevi in a 2017 primer on the state of lunar science. Modern researchers use rovers, satellites, and Earth-based sensors to analyze lunar chemistry, geology, and water content and build on the body of evidence obtained from Apollo.