Apollo 11 Research Paper

Apollo 11
Author Note
This research is being submitted on May 24, 2014, for Barton Pritzl’s G239 Introduction to Astronomy Course.
Apollo 11
American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he set took his first step, Armstrong famously said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John Kennedy announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. There are many who believe that the moon landings were hoaxed by the US government to assert their victory in the space race over Russia. Although
The photos taken on the Moon show the astronauts, lander and terrain with a black sky, but no stars. So theorists suggest they must have been filming on a sound-stage and just used a black backdrop. The reason you can’t see the stars in photos of the astronauts on the Moon isn’t because the stars aren’t there, it’s because of the exposure limits of cameras. The reason for this is that the Apollo landing took place during lunar mornings with the Sun shining brightly. The stars were not bright enough in the light to be captured in photographs CITATION Ker10 \l 1033 (Than, 2010). If the astronauts aimed a camera at the sky and let it sit there and take a long-exposure picture, you would, indeed, see the stars. However, with astronauts taking pictures of each other, in their bright white suits (designed to reflect as much sunlight as possible to keep the suits from overheating), the camera couldn’t get a good, crisp picture of the astronaut and still have the right exposure to pick up the much fainter stars in the background CITATION Sco13 \l 1033 (Sutherland,
The Lunar Lander weighed 17 tons and the powerful booster rocket at the base of the Lunar Lander was fired to slow descent to the moons service. Yet it has left no traces of blasting on the dust underneath. According to skeptics, the lander’s descent should have been accompanied by a large dust cloud and would have formed a noticeable crater CITATION Ker10 \l 1033 (Than, 2010). The reason why a noticeable crater was not formed is because the Apollo 11 lander’s engines were throttled back just before landing and turned off before actual touch down. The Lunar Module descended at an angle, moving laterally across the ground. When the astronauts identified a suitable landing site, the Lunar Module leveled off and dropped to the surface. The Lunar Module did not hover over its final landing site for any significant length of time to form a crater or kick up much dust CITATION Ker10 \l 1033 (Than,