Matthew Stucker, age 9, of Lahoma, Okla., for his question:
WHY DID MEN GO TO THE MOON?
Our moon has long been involved in our legends and folklore. Many still believe that a person will go insane if he sleeps in moonlight. Others feel that the lunar body is related to the changes in our weather. We’ve all heard stories of the man in the moon and the green cheese that you’ll find there. In mythology, the moon has always been a powerful god or goddess.
From the earliest days of civilization, man has been dreaming of going to the moon.
Man has always had a great desire to know everything that is possible to know. His thirst for scientific information has led him to come up with all of the answers that have made our modern wonders possible: electricity, the automobile, television, the airplane and now even space travel.
The Space Age was born in 1959 when the Russians put the first man made object on the moon with Luna 2. Then between 1966 and 1968 the United States put five Surveyor spacecraft on the moon, and these lunar probes provided almost 90,000 detailed photographs and untold amounts of scientific information.
Man’s quest for lunar scientific information paid off with success when Apollo Eleven landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. Men had met the challenge and had won. Men went to the moon because that was one way for him to satisfy his drive for more scientific knowledge.
In 1979 the astronauts from Apollo 15 drove across the moon’s surface in a powered machine called the lunar rover. And then in December of 1972 with Apollo 17, the United States made its last moon landing in the current series. A total of 12 men had set foot on the moon during the scientific program.
Scientific exploration will continue for many years to come. Man will be back on the moon one of these days soon—and you can count on that. It won’t be too long until there is a scientific base located on the moon. Scientists will be able to conduct many more experiments from a permanent station. A colony with up to 100 scientists can live and work on the moon for many weeks and months. Some scientists speculate that the moon bases will be built underground for protection against the sun’s radiation, extremes of cold and heat and falling meteoroids.
Scientists are sure that one of these days telescopes will be set up on space stations and the moon, since the earth’s atmosphere limits the study of faraway galaxies and stars. The horizons will be unlimited from outer space.
In 1967 more than 90 nations signed an agreement regarding space exploration. All agreed that outer space, including the moon, couldn’t be claimed by any nation nor could it be used for military purposes.