Category The First Men on the Moon

Edwin Eugene Aldrin was born in Worchester, Massachusetts, in 1896, not long after his parents, brother, and two sisters had immigrated to the USA from Sweden. After World War One he became a friend of Orville Wright. Later, while serving in the Philippines, he married Marion Gaddys Moon, the daughter of an Army chaplain. On his return to the USA in 1928 Aldrin left the Army to become a stockbroker. Three months prior to the financial crash of August 1929 he sold his stocks, bought a large house in Montclair, New Jersey, and joined Standard Oil to expand the market for petroleum by promoting commercial aviation. In 1938 he left Standard Oil to become an aviation consultant, and in World War Two joined the Army as a colonel in the Air Force.

Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr was born on 20 January 1930 – a new brother for 3- year-old Madeline and 1-year-old Fay Ann. As Fay Ann pronounced ‘brother’ as ‘buzzer’, he gained the nickname ‘Buzz’. He had his first ride in an aeroplane at 2 years of age, when his father flew to Florida, but was sick for most of the journey. At school his priority was sports, at which he was extremely competitive, with his father cheering him on – as long as he excelled, his father was content. On leaving high school in 1947 Buzz accepted his father’s case for attending a military school, but dismissed his father’s recommendation of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, opting instead for the Military Academy at West Point, New York. Instead of going to summer camp as he usually did, he attended a 6-week school in order to prepare for the entrance examinations, in which he scored sufficiently well to be accepted. The first-year curriculum gave more or less equal time to scholastics and athletics. One-third of the course work was in mathematics, at which he excelled, with the result that he was rated first in both scholastics and athletics. At his graduation in 1951, at the age of 21, he was rated third in his class of 435 students.

In his final year at West Point, Buzz and his father agreed that he should join the Air Force, but while his father favoured multi-engine school because it would inevitably lead to command of a crew, Buzz wished to be a fighter pilot. After 6 months of basic flight training, 3 months of fighter pilot training, and 3 months at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, learning to fly the F-86 fighter-interceptor, he was

posted to the 51st Fighter Wing, arriving in Seoul, South Korea, on 26 December 1951. Although the war was less intense by the time he was ready for his first operational mission in February 1952, on 14 May he shot down a MiG during a patrol over North Korea (his gun camera film of the pilot ejecting was featured in Life magazine a week later) and on 7 June shot down a second. By the ceasefire on 1 July 1952 he had clocked up a total of 66 missions. He returned to Montclair in December. Prior to his Korean deployment he had accompanied his parents to a cocktail party where one of his father’s acquaintances, Mrs Evelyn Archer, invited him to dinner to meet her daughter, Joan, who had just gained her degree from Columbia and was hoping to make a career as a television actress. Michael Archer, her father, was an oil executive. Although Buzz and Joan had not corresponded while he was in Korea, he phoned her on his return and asked her to accompany him to a New Year’s Eve party, which she did. They met twice more before he returned to Nellis as a gunnery instructor (he had gained two ‘combat kills’, after all), and they kept in touch. Some time later, Buzz invited Joan for a week’s sightseeing in Las Vegas, which, although nearby for him, represented a major trip for her. As her mother had been killed in an air crash while Buzz was in Korea, Joan asked her father to accompany her. On the penultimate day Buzz proposed marriage, to which Joan agreed with her father’s consent. When Buzz’s parents were informed, they were delighted. Buzz and Joan were married on 29 December 1954, and two days later they left for Maxwell Field, Alabama, where Buzz was to spend 4 months in squadron officer school. He was then assigned as aide to the Dean of the Air Force Academy in Colorado, and as a flight instructor six months later. In August 1956 he went to Bitburg in West Germany to fly the F – 100 with the 36th Fighter Wing. In June 1959 they returned to the USA to enable Buzz to gain a postgraduate degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to advance his military career. One option was a masters degree as a preliminary to attending Experimental Test Pilot School. If he took a doctorate, he would, on graduating, have exceeded the age limit for Experimental Test Pilot School. He opted therefore for a doctorate in astronautics – a new subject that was clearly going to become important to the Air Force. In May 1961, when John F. Kennedy initiated the ‘Moon race’, Aldrin was 30 years old and well into his doctorate. In December 1962, with a thesis entitled Line of Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous in draft, he was sent to the Air Force’s Space Systems Division in Los Angeles. When NASA invited applications for its third intake of astronauts in June 1963, he noted that the requirement for test pilot experience had been relaxed; now 1,000 hours of jet time was sufficient. He applied, and on 17 October was announced as one of 14 new astronauts. The family set up home in Nassau Bay, one of many new housing developments near the Manned Spacecraft Center.

In view of his background, Aldrin’s assigned specialism was mission planning, working with the Trajectories and Orbits group led by Howard W. ‘Bill’ Tindall, which studied every contingency involving the computer that would process either radar tracking or sextant sightings to compute a sequence of manoeuvres designed to make a rendezvous in space – the primary objective of the Gemini program was to demonstrate rendezvous techniques for Apollo. He tutored Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford for Gemini 6, which was to attempt the first rendezvous. As Aldrin noted, “It was essential for the pilot to understand what the computer was doing, and to make sure it made no errors that went unnoticed – i. e. the pilot must know how to guide the computer to the correct conclusion.” When Aldrin was assigned as backup pilot for Gemini 10, the frustration was that the system of ‘rotation’ introduced by Slayton – although not rigidly followed, by which, after serving in a backup capacity, a crew would skip two missions and fly the next – would in this case lead nowhere since the program was to finish with Gemini 12. Nevertheless, Aldrin was delighted to get a crew assignment because, having served in a backup capacity for Gemini he would rank ahead of the total ‘rookies’ when it came to selecting the early Apollo crews. Fate intervened, however. On 28 February 1966 Elliot See and his partner for Gemini 9, Charles Bassett, died in an air crash. In reshuffling the crews, Slayton advanced Lovell and Aldrin from backing up Gemini 10 to backing up Gemini 9, which put them in line to fly Gemini 12. When the radar on that mission failed, Aldrin completed the rendezvous by computing the manoeuvres manually, and later, during a record three spacewalks, he demonstrated a mastery of the art of working in weightlessness that paved the way for such activities to be included on Apollo missions. Although Aldrin had not been as involved in the development of the LM as some of his peers, his expertise made him well suited to accompany Armstrong on the first lunar landing attempt.

At the time of Apollo 11, the Aldrin family comprised Buzz and Joan, sons Michael, aged 13, and Andrew, 11, and daughter Janice, 11.

When John F. Kennedy challenged his nation to land a man on the Moon before the decade was out, Hubert M. ‘Jake’ Drake at Edwards Air Force Base, who in the 1950s participated in the initial planning for the X-15 rocket plane, concluded that to provide realistic training for flying a lunar module it would be necessary to build a free-flying craft that accurately reproduced the stability and control issues involved in ‘flying’ in a vacuum and a reduced gravitational field. Drake set up a study group to design such a machine and enrolled Neil Armstrong as one of the team’s members. After reviewing 1950s research into vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, it was decided to mount a jet engine in a gimbal to provide vertical thrust. Its throttle would operate in two modes: in ‘terrestrial mode’ the jet would run conventionally in order to lift off vertically and climb to the altitude needed to simulate the lunar landing, and then be throttled back into ‘lunar mode’ in order to offset five-sixths of the craft’s weight. The rate of descent would be controlled by a pair of throttleable thrusters affixed to the airframe. The attitude control system was based on that developed for the X-15 at the top of its ballistic arc, where aerodynamic control surfaces are useless. It was decided to use 16 thrusters, arranged in pairs, to control roll, pitch and yaw. The project attracted interest precisely because aerodynamics played no part in the craft’s operation. To translate, it would have to tilt, and use the angled component of the thrust from the ‘descent engines’ to impart lateral motion, then tilt back to cancel this motion. By a remarkable coincidence, Bell Aerosystems in Buffalo, New York – which had built the X-1 rocket plane in which Charles E. Yeager had ‘broken the sound barrier’ on 14 October 1947, and was the only US

It was for this reason that the KC-135 aircraft used for such training was nicknamed the Vomit Comet.

aircraft manufacturer with experience of using jet engines for VTOL – independently submitted to NASA a proposal to develop a vehicle to be used to investigate the issues of making a landing on the Moon. When NASA sent Bell out to Edwards, Drake realised that the company was better placed to develop the vehicle and, as a result, on 18 January 1963 NASA issued Bell with a contract to supply two Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) aircraft.

On 15 April 1964 the two LLRVs were shipped to Edwards Air Force Base in crates, because Drake’s team wished to do the assembly and install the instruments themselves. Each vehicle stood 10 feet tall on four legs spanning some 13 feet, and weighed 3,700 pounds. The General Electric CF-700-2V turbofan jet delivered a maximum of 4,200 pounds of thrust. The descent engines for ‘lunar mode’ were non­combustion rocket thrusters using pure hydrogen peroxide propellant, each of which could be throttled between 100 and 500 pounds of thrust in order to control the rate of descent and horizontal translations.[12] The pilot sat on a platform that projected forward between the front legs. In view of the fact that if a vehicle were to get into trouble it would be close to the ground, probably be falling, and certainly be within seconds of crashing, it was fitted with a lightweight ejection seat developed by Weber Aircraft that was not only capable of lifting its user clear of an aircraft on the ground but also from an aircraft that was at low level and falling at 30 feet per second. On 30 October 1964 NASA test pilot Joseph S. Walker, a former X-15 pilot, made three vertical ‘hops’ in LLRV-1, remaining within 10 feet of the ground for a total duration of 60 seconds to exercise the hydrogen peroxide attitude control thrusters, the steam from which nearly obscured the view of the spectators. Armstrong was no longer at Edwards, but having been assigned the task of overseeing the development of trainers and simulators he closely monitored the test program.

In 1963 NASA began to train astronauts to fly helicopters in the hope that this would enable them to gain a feel for the issues of making a landing on the Moon. However, while a helicopter could duplicate the trajectory of the final phase of a lunar landing, the basic aerodynamic requirements of helicopter flight meant that the controls could not simulate those of a spacecraft. In contrast, the ми-aerodynamic LLRV did accurately simulate control over the rate of descent, attitude, and lateral movement. On 26 January 1965, Warren J. North, who was in charge of training, ordered that astronauts must have 200 hours of helicopter training prior to trying to fly the LLRV. In October that year NASA drew up the preliminary specifications for a Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV). Based on the LLRV, this new vehicle was to have an upgraded jet and larger tanks of peroxide for longer endurance in ‘lunar mode’, a cabin with a similar field of view to that envisaged for the LM, a 3- axis hand controller (instead of the stick and pedals of the LLRV), instruments laid out as in the LM, and as much as possible of the LM’s built-in flight control logic in order to enhance its fidelity as a trainer. In August 1966 Armstrong and Joseph S. Algranti, chief of aircraft operations at the Manned Spacecraft Center, worked with Bell to implement these upgrades. To augment helicopter training, a cratered surface based on the highest resolution pictures from the Ranger probes was mocked up, and on climbing to 500 feet the astronauts would cut the throttle and land at various angles and rates of descent and in a variety of lighting conditions to familiarise themselves with visually gauging their height and sink rate over the alien landscape. Meanwhile, it had been decided that once Edwards completed its LLRV tests these vehicles should be sent to Ellington. When LLRV-1 arrived on 12 December 1966, Armstrong was present to watch Algranti perform the formal acceptance trial. LLRV-2 followed in mid-January 1967. In a rationalisation, the two LLRVs were redesignated LLTV A1 and A2, and the three new vehicles were to be B1, B2 and B3. Before being permitted to fly, an astronaut was required to undertake a 3-week helicopter refresher, 1 week of familiarisation with the Lunar Landing Research Facility at Langley,[13] spend 15 hours in a ground simulator and then be cleared by Algranti.

Armstrong made his first flight in LLTV A1 on 27 March 1967, but did not fly again until starting an intensive program of lunar landing rehearsals in early 1968. A typical flight involved using the jet at maximum thrust to lift off vertically and climb to 500 feet altitude, throttling back to balance five-sixths of the weight, and then, as when using the helicopter, flying a profile that would match the trajectory of a LM at that altitude, except that now the rate of descent and lateral manoeuvres were actively controlled employing the ‘descent engines’. As Armstrong reflected of his experience:[14]

‘‘The thing that surprises people on their initial flights in ‘lunar mode’ is the tendency of the vehicle to float far beyond where you think it is going to go. It takes practice to anticipate the distance required to slow down – you must start to brake much earlier, if you are to stop where you want to stop. Similarly, if you are in a hover, and change your mind, it takes a lot of effort to get moving again. The vehicle is sluggish in its translating ability, so it takes a long time, and big angles, to gain a little speed and translate 50 feet. We hope to have one – and-a-half to two minutes of fuel essentially in hover when we’re landing on the

Moon, but you can use that up really fast if you change your mind frequently about where you want to go.”

On 6 May 1968 LLTV A1 went out of control during a descent and he had to eject.

“I lifted the vehicle off the ground and climbed to an altitude of 500 feet in preparation for making the landing profile. I had been airborne for about 5 minutes, and was down to about 200 feet when the trouble began. The first indication was a decreasing ability to control the vehicle. It began to tilt sharply. There was less and less response. The trouble developed rather rapidly, but wasn’t an abrupt stop. It was a decay in attitude control. Without attitude control there is no way to remain upright. The vehicle does have two separate systems for doing this, but in this case both systems failed at their common point – the high-pressure helium to pressurise the propellant to the rockets. I was losing both systems simultaneously, and that’s where I had to give up and get off. I guess I ejected at 100 feet, plus or minus – we don’t have a way of measuring it accurately, even from photographs. How far the ejection throws you depends on your attitude at the time you leave, and also on your upward or downward velocity at the time. If you start from an upright attitude at a hover, it will take you up about 300 feet. The parachute ejector is automatic, although there is a manual override. I had always thought I might be able to match the automatic system, but when I was reaching for the D-ring the automatic system had already fired.’’

Early on the morning of Sunday, 20 July, Ron Evans made the wake-up call.

‘‘Good morning,’’ replied Collins half a minute later. ‘‘You guys sure do start early.’’

‘‘It looks like you were really sawing them away.’’ Evans said, having noted the telemetry indicating that all three astronauts had been sleeping soundly.

‘‘You’re right,’’ Collins agreed. ‘‘How are all the CSM systems looking?’’

‘‘It looks like the command module’s in good shape. The Black Team’s been watching it real closely for you.’’

‘‘We appreciate that, because I sure haven’t.’’

Moments later, the spacecraft passed ‘over the hill’. While on the far side, the crew tidied up and prepared the breakfast. On their reappearance on revolution 10, Evans, making the most of his opportunity to converse, announced, ‘‘The Black Bugle just arrived with some morning news briefs, if you’re ready.’’

‘‘Go ahead,’’ Armstrong replied.

‘‘Today church services around the globe will be mentioning Apollo 11 in their prayers. President Nixon’s worship service at the White House is also dedicated to the mission, and fellow astronaut Frank Borman is still in there pitching – he will read the passage from Genesis that was read out on Apollo 8 last Christmas. The Cabinet and members of Congress, with emphasis on the Senate and House space committees, have been invited, together with a number of other guests. Buzz, your son, Andy, got a tour of the Manned Spacecraft Center yesterday which included the Lunar Receiving Laboratory; he was accompanied by your uncle, Bob Moon.’’ ‘‘Thank you,’’ said Aldrin.

‘‘Among the headlines about Apollo this morning,’’ Evans continued, ‘‘there is one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o has been living there for 4,000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree; the name of the rabbit is not reported.’’

The astronauts promised that they would ‘‘keep a close eye out for the bunny girl’’.

Evans went on, “You residents of the spacecraft Columbia may be interested in knowing that today is Independence Day in the country of Colombia. Gloria Diaz of the Philippines was crowned Miss Universe last night, beating sixty other girls for the global beauty title. Miss Diaz is 18, has black hair and eyes, and measures thirty – four-and-a-half, twenty-three, thirty-four-and-a-half. The first runner up was Miss Australia, then Miss Israel and Miss Japan. When you are on your way back, Tuesday night, the American and National League All Stars will be playing ball in Washington. Mel Stottlemyre of the Yankees is expected to be the American League’s first pitcher. No one’s predicting who’ll be first pitcher for the National League yet; they have nine on the roster.’’ And then he rounded off with a funny: “Although research has certainly paid off in the space program, research doesn’t always pay off, it appears. Woodstream Corporation, the parent company of the Animal Trap Company of America that has made more than a billion wooden spring mousetraps, reported that it built a better mousetrap but the world didn’t beat a path to its door. As a matter of fact, it had to go back to the old-fashioned kind. They said, ‘We should have spent more time researching housewives, and less time researching mice’. And with that the Black Bugle is completed for this morning.’’

‘‘Thank you, very much,’’ acknowledged Armstrong.

A few minutes later, the spacecraft passed around the far side again.

Meanwhile, at home

On his arrival in Mission Control, Kranz was astonished to find Dick Koos absent; Koos had rolled his new Triumph TR3 driving in, but was uninjured and arrived in time for the powered descent. On reviewing Lunney’s console log, Kranz was pleased to discover that he had not inherited any problems – the spacecraft was in excellent condition. Chris Kraft arrived, patted Kranz on the shoulder and wished him ‘‘good luck’’, then took his seat on Management Row. When Kranz was made a flight director early in the Gemini program, his wife Marta had begun the tradition of making him a waistcoat specifically for each mission. For Apollo 11 she had made one of white brocade inlaid with very fine silver thread. At 095:41 Kranz took over the flight director’s console, and Lunney went to brief the press. During the far-side pass, the other members of the White Team settled in for what was to be a momentous shift – the landing was about 7 hours off. Man could land on the Moon for the first time only once. As the shift began, this task had not yet been attempted. Soon it would be. Once achieved, the moment of its attainment would become part of the historical record. On looking around into the viewing gallery, Kranz noticed Bill Tindall, and waved him down to sit alongside him at his console. Kranz would later write of Tindall, ‘‘he was the guy who put all the pieces together, and all we did was execute them.’’[22]

At 9.30 am Joan Aldrin, her children and Robert and Audrey Moon, attended

Webster Presbyterian Church, where her husband served as an elder. The church was packed, with folding chairs in place to accommodate the extra worshippers. As in Mission Control, the mood was tense. The Reverend Dean Woodruff began his sermon: “Today we witness the epitome of the creative ability of Man. And we, here in this place, are not only witnesses but also unique participants.” Everyone knew that by the day’s end Armstrong and Aldrin might well be dead. Pat Collins, her children and sister Ellie Golden, went to morning Mass at St Paul’s Roman Catholic Church. Jan Armstrong remained at home and impatiently watched the clock. At noon some of the churchwomen delivered a cold luncheon to the Aldrin home, together with a cake that had been frosted with the Stars and Stripes and the words ‘We came in peace for all mankind’. Woodruff arrived later, and remained for the powered descent.

SEA OF TRANQUILITY

The Air Force C-141 Starlifter carrying NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine and the first rock box landed at Ellington Air Force Base on Friday, 25 July 1969. Awaiting it were Samuel C. Phillips, the Apollo Program Director, Robert R. Gilruth, Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, and George M. Low, Manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office in Houston. Gilruth and Low posed for photographs holding the box, before taking it to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory on the campus of the Manned Spacecraft Center. The second box arrived later that day. The next day, a member of the 50-strong Preliminary Examination Team used a vacuum chamber with a window and rubberised ‘arms’ to raise the lid of the first box, and found the interior so coated with black dust as to make it impractical to say anything definitive about the contents! When the boxes were emptied, there was found to be 48 pounds of lunar material in the form of 20 individual rocks and a pile of fragments and grains. One by one, the rocks were cleaned for inspection. At a press conference on 28 July, Persa R. Bell, Director of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, opined that the rocks had been ‘‘beautifully selected’’. Elbert King, the curator, announced that the first rock to be examined under a microscope appeared to be a granular igneous rock. Gene Shoemaker of the US Geological Survey suggested that it represented a lava flow. But this was only a first impression. Once the material had been catalogued, small samples were issued to 150 principal investigators who had spent years developing the means to subject such material to almost every possible kind of analysis. The investigations proceeded at such a pace that on 15 September NASA was able to announce the preliminary findings and, to follow up, on 4 January 1970 the agency hosted the first of what was to become an annual Lunar Science Conference.1

To Harold C. Urey, who favoured the ‘cold’ Moon theory in which the interior was uniformly composed of ‘pristine’ material, the dark plains were the result of

These gatherings are now entitled the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conferences.

impact melting on a vast scale. While the astronauts were out on the surface, Urey had been concerned when Armstrong reported a vesicular rock, encouraged when Armstrong changed his mind, and dismissed Armstrong’s later report of a rock he was sure was vesicular. Most of all, Urey was encouraged that they did not report finding the ‘frothy vacuum lava’ predicted by his leading rival, Gerard P. Kuiper, who favoured the ‘hot’ Moon theory in which the interior was differentiated and the dark plains were the result of upwellings of lava through fractures in the floors of major impact basins. The rocks proved to be a form of basalt rich in magnesium and iron (and therefore described as being ‘mafic’) which isotopic dating revealed to have crystallised some 3.84 to 3.57 billion years ago. In terms of texture, it was strikingly similar to terrestrial basalt. It was not impact melt. This meant that the Moon had undergone a process of thermal differentiation in which lightweight aluminous minerals had migrated up to the surface and the heavier minerals had sunk into the interior. The fact that some of this denser material had later been erupted indicated

that the interior had remained ‘hot’ for a significant period. However, when compared to terrestrial basalt, the lunar variety was enriched in titanium. The titanium-bearing mineral, which was new to mineralogists, was named ‘armalcolite’, in honour of the astronauts.[51] The lack of oxidised iron meant that the lava was created in a reducing environment (i. e. one devoid of oxygen). The most striking fact was the total absence of hydrous minerals. The lunar basalt was also deficient in volatile metals such as sodium. The low-alkali (i. e. sodium-depleted) lava would have had an extremely low viscosity, which is why it flowed so readily, and why it left so few ‘positive-relief’ features. The Sea of Tranquility was evidently accumulated by episodic volcanism over a period of several hundred million years. The presence of two types of basalt implied either that there were separate reservoirs of magma or that the single source had undergone chemical evolution over time.

As Armstrong later reflected of the lunar surface, ‘‘My impression was that we were taking a ‘snapshot’ of a steady-state process in which rocks are being worn down on the surface of the Moon with time, and other rocks are being thrown out on top as a result of new events somewhere near or far away. In other words, no matter when you had visited this spot before – 1,000 years ago or 100 years ago, or if you come back to it 1,000,000 years from now – you’d see some different things each time but the scene would generally be the same.’’ This was insightful. On the airless Moon there was little chemical erosion. Large impacts simply excavated bedrock, and this was progressively worn down by smaller impacts to produce the regolith, the majority of which was pulverised basalt. There was little meteoritic material. Many of the discrete samples proved to be regolith compacted by shock. When subjected to physical stress these ‘regolith breccias’ tended to fall apart. The ‘glassy material’ found in a small fresh-looking crater was regolith that had been heated and fused by a high-energy impact. This impact-driven weathering process was given the name ‘gardening’.

There was a small residue of the regolith that was very different in character. On the basis of his analysis of chemical data provided by Surveyor 7, which had landed near the crater Tycho in the southern highlands in 1968, Shoemaker had predicted that 4 per cent of the regolith at the Apollo 11 site would comprise minuscule fragments of light-coloured rock – and this proved to be the case. This light rock was plagioclase feldspar. Terrestrial plagioclase is rich in sodium, but the Moon is depleted in sodium and the lunar variant had calcium, making it calcic-plagioclase. Some of the fragments were sufficiently pure to justify being called anorthosite, this being the name for a rock comprising at least 90 per cent plagioclase, but most were diluted with mafic minerals and therefore were more properly called anorthositic gabbro; like the material Surveyor 7 had analysed. Shoemaker’s rationale for there being highland material in the regolith of the Sea of Tranquility was based on the manner in which the most recently formed highland craters splashed out ‘rays’ of material. Regarding the highlands, it could now be inferred that the primitive crust was composed of anorthositic rock. At the Lunar Science Conference, J. A. Wood noted that if the ‘exotic’ fragments in the Apollo 11 regolith were indeed highland rock, then their density of 2.9 grams per cubic centimetre (in comparison to the 3.4 average for the Moon) meant that the heat generated by giant impacts during the accretion of the Moon from planetesimals had created a ‘magma ocean’ which later solidified to form the crust. This was a significant insight into early lunar history.

What a difference one brief field trip had made; its ‘ground truth’ had scythed through the long-held theories without consideration for the professional standing of their proponents. Previously minor players found themselves in the limelight by virtue of having been proved right. For example, in a paper published a few weeks prior to Apollo 11, Anthony Turkevich reported a study of data from Surveyor 5, which landed in the Sea of Tranquility in 1967, near where Apollo 11 was to try to land, and he predicted the astronauts would return with titanium-enriched basalt.