Apollo 11 mission The Apollo 11 mission left behind more than 100 artifacts, including a spacesuit worn by Buzz Aldrin.

NASA

Space Race II

Scientists worry that a contest to send robotic rovers to the moon will threaten lunar landmarks

  • By Michael Milstein
  • Smithsonian magazine, June 2008

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    Google Lunar X Prize
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    While archaeologists take a hands-off approach to the six Apollo landing sites, researchers are more open to granting access to robotic sites. Charles Vick, a senior analyst at GlobalSecurity.org and an authority on the Russian space program, says historians could learn a lot about the still-shrouded Soviet space program by studying equipment left behind during the USSR's Luna probes, which landed between 1966 and 1976. In 1969, the USSR's Luna 15 probe crashed into the moon. Its mission was believed to be collecting lunar rocks and returning them to Earth, but scholars in the West still aren't sure. "We're not going to know until we go there and check it out," Vick says.

    Without new international agreements, the norms governing lunar archaeology are likely to remain vague. The Lunar X Prize rules state that an entrant must get approval for a landing site and "exercise appropriate caution with regard to the possibility of landing on or near sites of historic or scientific interest." Teams going for the bonus prize must submit a "Heritage Mission Plan" for approval by the judges, "to eliminate unnecessary risks to the historically significant Sites of Interest." (Lunar X Prize participants were scheduled to meet in late May to discuss the rules and guidelines.) Still, the contest rules don't specify what constitutes an unnecessary risk. And there's no guarantee where the competing spacecraft will end up. With no traffic cops on the moon, the only deterrent against damaging sites might be the prospect of negative publicity.

    O'Leary says the Lunar X Prize's lack of regulation is "scary"—a sentiment shared by others. But at least one Lunar X Prize entrant, William "Red" Whittaker, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, has a simple solution to minimize risk: after landing, his team's rover would use telephoto lenses to view Tranquility Base from afar.

    To Pomerantz, the competition's director, merely debating how to protect lunar history is a welcome sign that humanity is finally on the verge of going back: "It's exciting when questions that seemed distant and hypothetical are becoming not too distant and not too hypothetical after all." For now, archaeologists are just hoping a robotic rover doesn't take a wrong turn.

    Michael Milstein writes for The Oregonian in Portland.

    Correction: The original version of this story said that among the NASA equipment left behind on the moon was Buzz Aldrin's spacesuit. Not so. But his boots are there.

    The second race to the moon has begun—and this time there will be a big cash payout for the winner. Four decades after Neil Armstrong took his giant leap for mankind, the Google-sponsored Lunar X Prize is offering $20 million to any private team that puts a robotic rover on the moon, plus $5 million in bonus prizes for completing such tasks as photographing one of the numerous man-made artifacts that remain there—for instance, the Apollo 11 lunar module descent stage that Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left behind in 1969.

    One goal of the Lunar X Prize is to rekindle excitement in space exploration by beaming pictures of historic lunar locations to Web sites or even cellphones. But dispatching robots to snoop around the moon also poses a risk to some of the most precious archaeological sites of all time. What if a rover reached Tranquility Base, where Armstrong landed, and drove over footprints, which are still intact and represent humanity's first expedition to a celestial body? William Pomerantz, the director of space projects for the X Prize Foundation, acknowledges that possibility. "There's always a tradeoff between wanting to protect the history that's already there and wanting to visit the history," he says.

    The competition brings into focus a potential problem that worries a growing circle of archaeologists and space historians: the careless destruction of invaluable lunar artifacts. At Charles Sturt University in Australia, Dirk H.R. Spennemann—who specializes in the preservation of technological artifacts—says Tranquility Base symbolizes an achievement greater than the building of the pyramids or the first Atlantic crossing. And because the moon has no atmosphere, wind, water or known microbes to cause erosion or decay, every piece of gear and every footprint remain preserved in the lunar dust. Spennemann advocates keeping all six Apollo sites off-limits until technology enables space-faring archaeologists to hover above them, Jetsons-like. "We only have one shot at protecting this," he insists. "If we screw it up, it's gone for good. We can't undo it."

    The initial response to the Lunar X Prize initiative—which had ten registered teams at the end of April—suggests the moon's remoteness won't discourage unofficial visitors for long. History teaches a similar lesson. When the Titanic sank in 1912, few imagined that it would become an attraction. But not long after Robert Ballard discovered the wreckage in 13,000 feet of water in the North Atlantic in 1985, treasure hunters in submarines looted the doomed vessel of jewelry and dinnerware.

    Crafting an agreement that bars exploration of lunar sites in the coming age of space tourism may be difficult. To be sure, nations retain ownership of spacecraft and artifacts they leave on the moon, though it (and the planets) are common property, according to international treaties. In practical terms, that means no nation has jurisdiction over the lunar soil, upon which artifacts and precious footprints rest. "It would be our strong preference that those items remain undisturbed unless and until NASA establishes a policy for their disposition," says Allan Needell, curator of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Apollo collection. The "preservation of the historical integrity of the objects and the landing sites" would be a primary goal, he adds.

    How much stuff have people left on the moon? Professors and students from New Mexico State University (NMSU) cataloged equipment left behind at Tranquility Base and identified more than 100 items and in situ features from Apollo 11 alone, including Buzz Aldrin's boots, Armstrong's famous footprint and a laser ranging retroreflector, which, for the first time, measured the precise distance between the moon and Earth. Much of the equipment was discarded by Armstrong and Aldrin just prior to lifting off to rendezvous with the orbital craft that would take them home; they needed to lighten the lunar module ascent stage, which they'd burdened with 40 pounds of lunar rocks and soil.

    The New Mexico researchers had hoped that their inventory would help them gain protection for Tranquility Base as a National Historic Landmark. But the National Park Service, which oversees the program, rejected the proposal, saying the agency doesn't "have sufficient jurisdiction over the land mass of the Moon." Moreover, a NASA lawyer advised that merely designating a lunar site a landmark "is likely to be perceived by the international community as a claim over the Moon"—a land grab that would place the United States in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. So Beth Laura O'Leary, an anthropologist who led the NMSU project, added the historic lunar site to an official list of archaeological sites maintained by the state of New Mexico. It's a largely symbolic gesture, but it does mean at least one governmental body recognizes Tranquility Base as a heritage site. "You don't want people putting pieces of Apollo on eBay any more than you want them chiseling away at the Parthenon," O'Leary says.

    Of course, NASA itself has done some extraterrestrial salvaging. In 1969, in arguably the first archaeological expedition conducted on another world, Apollo 12 astronauts Alan Bean and Pete Conrad visited the robotic Surveyor 3 spacecraft, which had landed two years earlier. They inspected the landing site and removed the spacecraft's television camera, a piece of tubing and the remote sampling arm. The parts were returned to Earth so researchers could assess the lunar environment's effects on equipment.

    While archaeologists take a hands-off approach to the six Apollo landing sites, researchers are more open to granting access to robotic sites. Charles Vick, a senior analyst at GlobalSecurity.org and an authority on the Russian space program, says historians could learn a lot about the still-shrouded Soviet space program by studying equipment left behind during the USSR's Luna probes, which landed between 1966 and 1976. In 1969, the USSR's Luna 15 probe crashed into the moon. Its mission was believed to be collecting lunar rocks and returning them to Earth, but scholars in the West still aren't sure. "We're not going to know until we go there and check it out," Vick says.

    Without new international agreements, the norms governing lunar archaeology are likely to remain vague. The Lunar X Prize rules state that an entrant must get approval for a landing site and "exercise appropriate caution with regard to the possibility of landing on or near sites of historic or scientific interest." Teams going for the bonus prize must submit a "Heritage Mission Plan" for approval by the judges, "to eliminate unnecessary risks to the historically significant Sites of Interest." (Lunar X Prize participants were scheduled to meet in late May to discuss the rules and guidelines.) Still, the contest rules don't specify what constitutes an unnecessary risk. And there's no guarantee where the competing spacecraft will end up. With no traffic cops on the moon, the only deterrent against damaging sites might be the prospect of negative publicity.

    O'Leary says the Lunar X Prize's lack of regulation is "scary"—a sentiment shared by others. But at least one Lunar X Prize entrant, William "Red" Whittaker, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, has a simple solution to minimize risk: after landing, his team's rover would use telephoto lenses to view Tranquility Base from afar.

    To Pomerantz, the competition's director, merely debating how to protect lunar history is a welcome sign that humanity is finally on the verge of going back: "It's exciting when questions that seemed distant and hypothetical are becoming not too distant and not too hypothetical after all." For now, archaeologists are just hoping a robotic rover doesn't take a wrong turn.

    Michael Milstein writes for The Oregonian in Portland.

    Correction: The original version of this story said that among the NASA equipment left behind on the moon was Buzz Aldrin's spacesuit. Not so. But his boots are there.


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    Comments

    On July 20, 2006, Dr. O'Leary's efforts resulted in designation of the Apollo 11 Tranquility Base archeological site on the moon as LA 2,000,000 in the State of New Mexico's Archaeological Records Management Section (ARMS)database. The New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo, NM, serves as the host for the LA 2,000,000 on Earth. The location of the marker at the museum is forever linked to the lunar landing site.

    Posted by Cathy Harper on June 13,2008 | 09:48AM

    Ref to returning to historical sites--I fully agree with the argument that sites on the moon should be off limits to X Prize or other related ventures. These sites must be documented by Lunar archaeologists and space historians. It was the humble and fuzzy images as transmitted to Earth that help spark the imaginations of many people around the world as well as those who continued into scientic studies. I am one of those. I have a photograph of the moon and the region where Armstrong landed at Tranquility Base. The photo was taken when the astronauts were on the Moon. While you cannot see them or the lunar lander--it always reminds me of the great event. We must not make the mistakes we have made here, just for commercial purposes.

    Posted by Ronald S. Senykoff, Ph.D. on June 20,2008 | 07:00AM

    I really doubt that Armstrong's first few footprints are there. Climbing in and out of the lander would have mucked them up as well as the engine blast when the lander lifted off to come home.

    Posted by Gary on June 22,2008 | 02:16PM

    DEAR SIR I LIKED YOUR WEBSITE VERY MUCH

    Posted by BARKAT on June 28,2008 | 04:49AM

    I saw the first step of a man in the moon in a 1959 Motorola TV set in the middle of the cold war in communist Cuba hidden from the political police. I was 23 years old and I still remember vividly the emotions and the happiness we felt when americans astronauts proved that this country was the first nation in achivied that dream and not the invasors of my homeland.
    GOD BLESS AMERICA.

    Posted by Miguel A. Echenique on July 18,2009 | 05:53PM

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