SECRETS TO BE FOUND

The moon is a Rosetta Stone of the planets.

--Robert Jastrow

UNCORRUPTED by the swirling gases of an atmosphere, unworn by the erosive pounding of wind and water, the moon has its history written plainly on its face. Geologically, its past and its present are as one, and clues to the events of billions of years are strewn across its surface with tantalizing clarity.

In the past five years, man has used the sophisticated instruments of the space age to learn more about the moon than he did during the 360 years that followed Galileo's pioneering look at the lunar surface through a telescope in 1609: Unmanned spacecraft have crashed into the moon, orbited it, measured it, and photographed it from every conceivable angle, giving man his first view of the lunar far side. Ingenious soft-landing spacecraft have dug into its soil and even chemically analyzed it by remote control.

Yet despite the recent heady accomplishments, the major questions about the moon remain unanswered: Where and how did it originate? Was it torn Eve-like from the side of the earth, or did it form separately out of the same primordial dust cloud? Was it a planetary interloper captured by the earth's gravity when it wandered too close, or did it coalesce from small asteroids in orbit around the ancient earth? Did it ever have an atmosphere? water? life?

Now, after centuries of wondering and theorizing, man is on the threshold of knowing. On the lunar surface, he may at last learn the secrets not only of the moon and its birth but also of the beginnings of his own planet and of the solar system itself.

The Apollo 11 manned landing will begin returning scientific dividends as soon as Astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin start to explore the lunar surface. Both are competent amateur geologists. They have had more than 120 hours of instruction from NASA geologists, and they have practiced collecting rock and soil samples in lunarlike terrain such as the Grand Canyon, California's Medicine Lake highlands, the Arizona meteorite crater, the arctic wastelands of Iceland, and Alaska's Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Even their on-the-spot descriptions of the moon, to be transmitted instantaneously by radio to earth, should be of substantial value.

Other scientific benefits will flow immediately from the instruments that the astronauts will leave behind on the moon. As soon as Astronaut Aldrin sets up a seismometer on the lunar surface, for example, a command radioed from earth will activate it by releasing four suspended weights. In the future, whenever a quake or a meteor disturbs the lunar surface, the seismometer's frame will vibrate, while the suspended weights remain immobile. The seismometer, sensing the relative motion between the frame and the weights, will express it as digital data and transmit it to earth. The instrument is so sensitive that it will even register Astronaut Aldrin's footsteps after he sets it in place and clomps off.

Precise Measuring Rod

The astronauts will also leave behind a laser reflector pointed toward the earth. The reflector actually consists of an array of 100 quartz corner reflectors, so called because they are shaped like the corner of a cube or a room. Each reflector has a valuable characteristic: it will reflect a beam of light directly back to the source. Thus light aimed at the lunar reflector from a laser located in Los Angeles, for instance, will bounce directly back to Los Angeles.

By timing the round trip of the laser beam, scientists will be able to fix the distance between the earth and the moon at any time to within 6 in. of the exact figure. This precise measuring rod should help answer a number of vexing scientific questions. By revealing previously unmeasurable variations in the orbit of the moon, for example, it should provide a better understanding of the nature of gravity. For if scientists can determine precisely how much the moon's orbit is increasing each year, they may finally be able to confirm--or disprove--the theory that the force of gravity is gradually diminishing.

Using the same distance-measuring technique, with the moon as a reference point, scientists will, during the next several years, also be able to make precise measurements of the wobbling of the earth on its axis. This motion, called Chandler's Wobble, should tend to damp out with the passage of time, but is periodically reinforced by unknown forces--possibly earthquakes. More accurate measurements of the wobble with the aid of the laser reflector might someday lead to a technique for earthquake prediction.

Another terrestrial phenomenon--continental drift--could be confirmed by the lunar laser experiment. Periodically measuring the distance between the moon and lasers beamed from fixed points in Africa and South America, scientists will use triangulation to determine whether the distance between the two continents is gradually increasing.

The astronauts will leave a third item, the solar-wind experiment, on the lunar surface for only two hours or so. Soon after emerging from Eagle, they will place on the lunar surface a sheet of aluminum foil suspended from a stand. It will be exposed to the constant stream of particles expelled by the sun and should trap rare gases such as argon, krypton, xenon, neon and helium. Returned to earth in a vacuum box, the captive gases will be analyzed to give scientists new insights into the sun and the "wind" that it blows through the solar system.

Beyond a doubt, however, the most important contribution of Apollo 11 to modern science will be the 100-odd lbs. of lunar rock and soil scheduled to be brought back by the astronauts. To safeguard this precious cargo, NASA has set up an elaborate system that stretches from the moon across space to Houston's $15.8 million Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) and to universities and laboratories all over the world. Says LRL Curator Elbert King: "Scientifically, this will be worth more than any other material in history."

Biological Barrier

Elaborate safeguards have been set up to protect the lunar samples from contamination. Should earthly gases and organisms invade the moon rocks before they are thoroughly analyzed, investigators would find it difficult to distinguish between the lunar and terrestrial origins of their samples.

In the safety of their triple-sealed vacuum storage boxes, the lunar samples will be rushed to the LRL even before the Apollo 11 crew members arrive to wait out their 21-day quarantine period. There are "time-critical" tests that must be performed swiftly to detect any gas or radioactivity that the samples may give off; the emissions may decrease or stop soon after the sample is removed from the lunar surface. The samples will be sealed off from the rest of the world by a double biological barrier: 1) a vacuum system and a series of vacuum chambers in which the specimens remain while technicians handle them through insulated "glove ports" or by remote-controlled mechanical arms; and 2) an air-conditioning system that maintains lower air pressure within the LRL than outside so that, if there is a break in the system, air would flow in, keeping lunar matter from leaking out.

The lunar samples will remain under quarantine in the LRL for 45 to 50 days, while 200 NASA scientists and technicians photograph, weigh, catalogue, chip and even burn them. Particles of the samples will be tested on living cells, including those taken from fish and from a human cancer. Other particles will be fed to a variety of earth life, such as Japanese quail, algae, sunflowers, pine seedlings, oysters, white mice and cockroaches--the last chosen because they are one of the hardiest insects known to man, having survived as a distinct genus for millions of years. All the organisms involved were painstakingly bred and raised in germ-free conditions. The mice, for example, were born by caesarean section in sterile surgery and raised in a sterile environment.

If the organisms remain healthy and no other evidence of lunar bugs develops by the end of the quarantine period, samples of lunar rocks will be sent to 142 "principal investigators" at outside universities and laboratories, chiefly in the U.S. "Some of these men have been waiting for such a chance for 40 years," says LRL Director Persa Bell.

Several groups of the eager investigators have been assigned the job of measuring the age of the lunar specimens by radioactive dating methods. By determining the ratio of radioactive elements (say, rubidium and uranium) in a moon sample to the amounts of their products of decay (strontium and lead, respectively), scientists can make a good approximation of its age. Thus, because the Apollo 11 samples will be taken from the surface of the Sea of Tranquillity, researchers may well be able to estimate the age of the moon's maria, or seas. This, in turn, might settle a longstanding controversy among selenologists: Were the maria formed as recently as 100 million years ago, or have they existed nearly as long as the moon itself--billions of years?

Perhaps most intriguing is what the moon may reveal about the earth's murky infancy. The earth was formed some 4.5 billion years ago, but the slow, relentless process of its evolution wiped out all traces of its earliest years; the oldest known terrestrial rocks date back about 3.3 billion years. "What has happened during the missing 1.2 billion years?" wonders Astronomer Robert Jastrow, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "We do not know; they are a blank page in the history of our planet. If the age of the rocks on the surface of the moon turns out to be 4.5 billion years, we may learn the answer." One of the most important parts of the answer concerns biogenesis, the beginning of life, which occurred on earth more than three billion years ago.

Some scientists are hoping that unexpected clues in Apollo's samples will lead to new and more satisfying theories about the moon's origin. Complains Astrophysicist Ralph Baldwin: "There is no existing theory that gives a satisfactory explanation of the earth-moon system as we know it." Nobel Laureate Chemist Harold Urey wryly notes that it would be easier to prove that the moon did not exist than to get agreement on how it came to be.

Little Green Bugs

Chemical analysis of the samples may also help determine whether lunar material was ever hot enough to have melted, or whether it has been relatively cool almost from the first. Moon specimens strikingly lacking in volatile elements such as potassium and arsenic could indicate that these substances had been expelled by high temperatures--and would support the theory of a volcanic moon. Those who believe that meteors gave the moon its cratered surface might still argue, however, that the volcanism had occurred only in areas struck--and heated--by huge meteors. Studies of the crystal size and average density of sample rocks will supply other evidence that should go a long way toward proving or disproving the theory that the moon endured an earthlike period of melting, volcanism and slow cooling.

While the geologists, chemists and physicists are busy with their investigations, other scientists will be on an even more exciting quest. Biochemists will be examining the specimens for evidence of amino acids and protein molecules--the building blocks of life. Paleontologists will seek fossil remnants of organisms. At NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., still other investigators will try to coax life itself from the lunar rocks, using nutrients in the hope of resuming a life process that might have been interrupted millions of years ago.

In all, investigators will have three months after the quarantine is lifted in which to complete their studies of the material.

Soon afterward, there will be a major conference at which papers from all of the participating scientists will be presented.

Should there be a major discovery--perhaps even during the preliminary screening of material at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory--NASA is certain to lose no time in announcing the news.

"If we find any little green bugs," promises Wilmont Hess, the LRL's science director, "you'll hear about them real quick."

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