Word: apollo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...heat, Apollo has shed considerable light on the moon. It has revealed that the moon-and presumably the earth-was under incredibly intense bombardment by great chunks of space debris in the first 600 million to 800 million years after its formation 4.6 billion years ago. But by 3.1 billion years ago this bombardment stopped. The evidence returned by Apollo shows that the moon's surface has remained virtually unchanged through those eons of time. Perhaps most important of all, exploration of the moon has shown that it is not a simple, uncomplicated sphere but a true planetary body...
...fame wears off, some astronauts have found it painful to slip back into anonymity. "You know, the honeys stop doing handstands when you walk into a room, that sort of thing," says Mike Collins, who is personally pleased to be free of that artificial lifestyle. Adds Pete Conrad, Apollo 12's ebullient commander: "Who is a bigger bore than a former college football player who bends your ears about all those touchdowns he scored...
...moon as a Rosetta stone: an untouched repository of precious clues that would help reveal its origin and history, to say nothing of providing new insights about the evolution of the earth and other planets. Now, after five successful landings, many of their fondest hopes have been realized. The Apollo missions have brought back 594 lbs. of lunar rocks and soil, thousands of photographs and a flood of data that have changed some of man's basic concepts about the moon. But many of the mysteries remain. Indeed, the very act of exploration has created new lunar puzzles...
...Apollo samples show, for example, that the moon and earth have significantly different chemical compositions. That finding challenges the old idea that the moon was ripped from the earth. Yet scientists are still at a loss to explain how-or when-it was formed. Paleomagnetic studies of lunar rock indicate that the moon once had an unexpectedly strong magnetic field-and thus a large molten iron core. Yet equally valid data suggest that a core of significant size could not have existed. Even the ages of the rocks present new problems. The oldest specimens show that the moon...
...small, volcanically created cinder cones; they seem to be miniature versions of earthly features like Honolulu's Diamond Head. The cones may well be remnants of what NASA Geochemist Robin Brett calls "some of the last belches of lunar activity before the moon turned off." Finally, Apollo 17 planners have scheduled a program of experiments and observation far more sophisticated than any of the earlier scientific efforts on the moon...