8 Things Astronauts Left on the Moon

Now, the items serve as a reminder of that moment, Hanlon says, when “history comes full circle” and the astronauts were “able to prove the theory of a scientist, Galileo, who never reached the stars himself.” After accomplishing the first human moon landing, Aldrin carried a white piece of equipment roughly the size of a large suitcase and set it up on the ground. Sized for each individual and involved in how astronauts carried out their work, “they represent the most human side of the mission,” she says.

It is unclear if the astronauts intended to leave all the money there, but if anyone wanted to use the money for airfare, it wouldn’t make a dent in the cost of a ticket to the moon. Of the 1.4 billion two-dollar bills estimated to be in circulation by the Federal Reserve, at least 100 are reported to be on the surface of the moon. The catalog runs the gamut from batteries and wires to golf balls and even human waste. The first humans landed on the moon in 1969 as part of Apollo 11. Splashing down on December 11, the successful completion of the Artemis I mission paves the way for future expeditions to Mars and other destinations in the solar system.

Apollo Astronauts Left American Flags, Boots and Even Poop on the Moon. Here’s Why These Artifacts Matter

Aside from trash—from food packaging to wet wipes—nearly 100 packets of human urine and excrement have been discarded. Some of it is waste from the trip that the astronauts dumped when they got to their destination. They account for most of the mass left on the Moon. More than 70 spacecraft vehicles remain on the Moon for the simple reason that they are heavy and not worth the cost to bring back. Sharmila Kuthunur is an independent space journalist based in Bengaluru, India. The three stranded astronauts caught a free ride back to Earth using the moon’s gravity.

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Apollo 11, for example, carried not just the famous flag the astronauts planted. All told, the group identified an eclectic list of 106 objects, plus the footprints marking Armstrong and Aldrin’s steps. Bags and bags of human waste of one flavor or another. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Read a sci-fi short story every month and join a virtual community of fellow science fiction fans! Sign up to our monthly entertainment newsletter to keep up with all our coverage of the latest sci-fi and space movies, tv shows, games and books.

• The accords are a non-legally binding set of statements that outline best practices for safe exploration of the moon and, eventually, Mars and beyond.
• To Young, parts of astronauts’ spacesuits are the most fascinating artifacts.
• The first picture Neil Armstrong took after landing on the moon shows a jettisoned waste bag—likely with poop inside—one among 96 such bags that Apollo astronauts discarded on the moon across six missions.
• “They’re taking an artifact which doesn’t have any other function in the context of the mission and using it to express some kind of quite human relationship,” Gorman said.

These images are irrefutable proof rebutting the “landing hoax” theories. These remnants are not only evidence of human presence on the moon but also a poignant chronicle of our technological ingenuity and scientific ambition. These included areas of lighter soil around the Apollo 15 site, where the lunar module’s engine disturbed the regolith. In 2021, Chandrayaan-2 released high-resolution images of the Apollo 11 landing site, clearly showing the Eagle descent stage at Tranquility Base. Our species had arrived on another celestial body, marking one of our most outstanding achievements in history. When Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon in 1969, his words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” rippled throughout humanity.

Apollo 11 left behind four urine collection assemblies and four emesis bags. And then, of course, there’s that human waste. All of these objects were extras, so to speak, not part of the Apollo necessities. “You can look at the golf balls and say, well, that was kind of about a bit of fun,” Alice Gorman, an archaeologist at Flinders University in Australia who focuses on space, told Space.com. The astronauts may have brought medals to commemorate dead Soviet cosmonauts.

Shepherd’s golf balls can be seen on the moon, along with life support backpacks (left) and a TV camera. Ball-tracking technology wasn’t available at the time; however, 50 years later, analysts who studied images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter concluded that Shepard’s golf ball drifted a more modest 40 best cricket betting website yards (120 feet). Twelve American astronauts have walked on the moon, but Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard holds the unique distinction of being the only one to have played golf there. An artist’s concept of the Lunar Prospector spacecraft, which carried the ashes of Eugene Shoemaker, just before impact on the moon.

It was meant to celebrate the moon landing as a triumph for all of humanity, despite the Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that had originally ignited the race to the moon. “The journey of the astronauts is more than a technical achievement; it is a reaching-out of the human spirit,” the message from Nixon read. Space was at a premium in the cramped lunar modules, and the astronauts needed to make room for moon rocks they brought to Earth. Comparisons with samples returned by the Soviet Union’s robotic Luna program further validate their lunar origin. Apollo missions returned 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of Moon rocks to Earth.