Moon Is A Trash Can For Astronauts' Unneeded Gear

July 21, 1989|By CINDY SCHREUDER Orlando Sentinel

Neil Armstrong left more than footprints when he took his giant leap for mankind. He also left his boots.

He wasn't alone. All 12 of the U.S. astronauts who walked on the moon during the Apollo program left their boots - and six top-quality still cameras, and three moon rovers, and sections of six spaceships, plus assorted tools, sample bags and hundreds of other items.

Just about everything NASA sent to the moon, except for the astronauts, was deemed too heavy to tote home. So anything that could be junked to lighten the load, even bags of human waste, were left behind. And there they will stay for thousands of years, because the moon has no atmosphere to cause decay or corrosion.

"They may have a little lunar dust on them, but they would not have changed," said Terry White, a former NASA official who compiled a 28-page list of items left behind during the six lunar-landing missions.

Scavengers on the moon could find everything needed for a nostalgic field trip. Whether the equipment would work - after two decades of disuse, exposure to dust and the moon's nearly 500-degree temperature extremes - is another matter.

"I know if I were going back, I wouldn't want to plan on using anything," said Larry Haskin, a former NASA scientist now a chemist at Washington University in St. Louis. "It would be a pleasant surprise if it worked."

Some of the stuff should work, at least theoretically.

Upon landing, moon visitors could strap on abandoned lunar backpacks and use the emergency supply of oxygen in the tanks.

They could zip around on lunar rovers, though they'd need fresh batteries because the originals probably conked out long ago.

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