At how the lab contributed to the Apollo Program and moon landings. What scientists learned about the rocks and other materials gathered during the mission. The event took place on the gpl campus in pasadena california. Welcome to Nasas Jet Propulsion Laboratory in pasadena california. I am preston dikes. Three human beings set out on a journey across a mortar dashed across a quarter of a million miles of space to the moon. Two of them sat down on a fragile set down on a fragile landing craft. For that one human being to make that small step took the focused efforts of hundreds of thousands of people. Did not playch leading roles in the apollo effort. For all who contributed to wholo, as for all of us even play small role in the States Program today, the true reward lay not in the glory of the moment but to contributing to something greater. Jpls primary role during this festering apollo, deep Space Network was used to receive tv transitions from the moon. It was a vital communication backup, especially during the tense days apollo 13. Caltech, long a leader in the field of geology, contributed to the Field Training of the astronauts. We will hear just part of the apollo story, the road to apollo and how scientists at caltech and other institutions teased out some of the moons greatest secrets. If you are watching our live webcast you can submit questions by the youtube chat. Jpl is proudaker, to have an an Emmy Awardwinning speaker on its staff. The first nationally broadcast Television Series ever made about the space race. One of his key advisors was an apollo 11 astronaut who called spaceflight the real stuff. Astronomy. Ed to he was the executive producer of the astronomers. Is now he joined jpl and a fellow, working fulltime on films about jpls historic role in the expiration of space. Among his many honors, he is the recipient of the highest offer highest honor nasa bestows upon a civilian. Enough, hiswasnt birthday just happens to be july 20, which is the very day apollo 11 made the first human landing on the moon. Willelcome bette complain. Welcome blaine. Good evening, it is fantastic to see you all here. Im delighted to see so many of you. My birthday serves as the day we first landed on mars with the viking. Something was meant to be. Maybe i better stop while im ahead. The more i have come to understand the moons of the solar system, the more i appreciate them for their incredible diversity. Hyperion looks to me like a seashell. Looks to me like a ufo. If we have any star wars fans the darkesthere is hour. Darkest hour. Dark star. Beautifuloon is a world with geysers that spring out into space. Titan, titan has rivers and lakes. Nasa has Just Announced an exciting mission called dragonfly, that is going to explore titan. The right is jupiters europa. Seen orld thought is see more h2o than in all the oceans on earth combined. Workis jpl, we are hard at on a mission to be launched to this world. There are almost 200 moons in the solar system. Moons and many others exist in the outer solar system. Mars has two very small moons. Venus and mercury have none. Only the earth has a sizable and beautiful moon. We all have one large moon why of all the terrestrial planets we have one large moon is a mystery. Its a great honor and privilege to share the stage with you. As for the present we are in the news not only because of the apollo 11 anniversary. Nasa has declared we are going moon, the next up on our way to mars. Tell whether this is the latest case of us becoming moonstruck, and whether it is actually going to stick again. The biggest question is whether we will have the will, which translates into the funding to go. Technologies have come along way in the last 50 years. Learned about them helps to make the case of going again. Once it was thought the moon is bone dry. That turns out not to be the case. Missions have found evidence of water in the polar regions of the moon and craters, where sunlight in the shadow of craters where sunlight doesnt reach. There you see some examples of the water. If you wish to live off the land, you need water. India is scheduled for a new mission to the moon next week. It is a combination of an orbiter, a lander and a rover. Then there is china. China has made no secret in its interest of exploring resources of the moon. A chinese rover is now landing on the moon. Its an impressive technological achievement. If you know where the rover landed on the far side of the moon, but it is in a named after theodore carmen. I hope that name sounds familiar. It is none of other than the first director none other than the first director of jpl. I cant help but wonder other is selection of the crater somehow intentional in terms of where the chinese landed. Im not exactly sure what the message might be. Larger point im trying to make is we may be at the beginning of a new space race. A space race that is a multinational one. Speaking of space races, lets go back to the first one to understand how apollo came to be. To 1957. O go back we are going to watch a video clip from one of my documentaries, which i have myself to cut down. Could we roll the first clip . In october of 1957, the soviet union shocked the world with the launch of the first orbiting satellite sputnik. Response, vanguard, was also a surprising and spectacular event. Only one in auard was the long string of setbacks for the United StatesSpace Program. In 1959,t to the u. S. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev made sure to underscore the disparity between the two nations. A scientific feat heavily capitalized on by red propaganda. It gave Solid Foundation to khrushchevs soviet achievement. Rested with hopes its newly formed space agency, the National Aeronautics and space administration. Given an assortment of technical facilities. One of them was the jet Propulsion Laboratory in pasadena california. Groups nasa inherited, jpl was a part, managed and staffed by one of the worlds most renowned engineering universities. Jpl was accustomed to a tradition of independence. Perspective, nasa was a newcomer with no portfolio. And thebuilt missiles First Successful u. S. Satellite one. Re when nasa asked pickering his ideas for the nations robotic Space Program, he responded with an ambitious plan that called for jpl flying an armada of spacecraft to the moon and nearby planets. Sputnik has been called americas pearl harbor. Placing greater emphasis on science and math in the classrooms, for which i suffered, to the extreme, the idea of setting off a nuclear to demonstraten americas technological capability. People in the United States toyed with this idea. People in the United States toyed with this idea. They included the father of the hydrogen bomb. Here, they explore this ideal to great depth. One aspect is to consider what might be derived by debris that may be scattered by an explosion. One of the research was a by the late carl sagan, who would become one of the worlds best known scientists and an outspoken critic of the nuclear arms race. Union continued to surprise and confound. When Nikita Khrushchev made the first visit of the soviet head of state in the United States, the soviets timed the trip to coincide with the First Mission to reach the moon, kind of rubbing our nose in it. They took this image of the far side of the moon. At the time it was a technological triumph. Eisenhower could only grin and bear it. 10 weeks after john f. Kennedy took office, the soviet union struck again. Address,ys inaugural it is suggested aloud that the soviets should explore space together. This memo direct ding directing Vice President johnson take, putting on a space lab, landing a rocket on idea. On, or any other if not, john if not john, why not . Johnson turned to nasa andnistrator james webb secretary of defense john mcnamara. With the only real hope to have the first person in space landing on the moon. A Human Mission to mars. Proposale practical went out and kennedy took it to and now made his very famous speech, proposing to land a man on the moon and returning safely to earth before this decade is out. Phrase not known as the the story of the phrase before this decade is out. It was a lastminute compromise. The address mentioned there was of 1967. E had 1967 stayed in, we would not be saying today that nasa met. Ennedys goal escapes, jplennedy was working on two moon products moon projects. Even crash landing on the moon turned out to be a lot harder than expected. Let me summarize what happened. Didnt work, ranger two didnt work. Ranger five didnt work. Lab regrouped. Year later they launched ranger six. It worked perfectly, except in the last few minutes, when his camera refused to turn on. No pictures meant another failure. 1964 was jpls darkest day. Crowdingy this room, out as many people as you see in this room were people listening to what was going on life. They had better luck with ranger seven. You are sitting in the same room with some of the people, some of the footage you are about to see of the same people. You have six rangers that failed. Jpl, this wasn really a catastrophe. Fear it was going to fall apart. Everybody pulls together and basically what can i do . Debacleonths after the of ranger six, jpl was ready to try once more. It had required working three shifts a day, seven days a week. Strain on everybody. Theres no telling what jpl would have been like or what would have happened to jpl. It was a sobering experience. Three days after lift off, jpls auditorium was once again filled beyond capacity with people and intention. Recorders weree started at both sites. We are anticipating turn on momentarily. We are five seconds from full power. We have full power on every channel. All tape recorders are recording. Video is very strong, seconds to impact. Impact, impact has occurred. Impact, we are functioning. Roger. Occurred, the auditorium erupted in a great cheer. People shook hands and hugged once in hugged one another. Engineer likened the event to a spiritual experience. Some people had smuggled in some champagne and champagne it was aere open area great celebration. Finally the now humble jpl workforce had succeeded. Camera recorded 4000 images that arent much to behold today, but at the time they were a thousand times better than, and than any image of the moon from earth. Here are some headlines to give you some sense. The relief of we had finally succeeded. Im interested in the two heard in the minor riot. I dont know the story about that. Surveyor was a much more complicated mission. Was about staying alive on the moon for some time. Lets just watch the video. That will tell more than i can. Of all the questions nasa wanted answered, the most important was knowing what the surface would be like for apollo astronauts. Was it solid or wood layers of and act like quicksand swallow them whole . Nasa had hoped the answers would come from surveyor. This was jpls first experience. Strugglingtor was for good reasons. Surveyor was far more technically challenging than the rangers. Spacecraft not only had to soft land on the moon, it had to do so autonomously. It is also expected to send back images of the lunar surface. That was a trying period. When we were growing up was the same time when hughes was growing up. We didnt always mesh. A trying time. The ergonomic shroud is off and grand bahama is tracking. As shown by the animated dots on the monitor, separation has occurred. Launch,urs after surveyor one was only 1000 miles with speedhe moon increasing as the moons gravitational attraction beckons. Ignition looks stable. Falling steadily. The vehicle was supposed to dter a fixed plated escent. That happens. Excellentare in condition, all things look good. 113 feet per second speed. Above the surface, the engines are supposed to shut off and drop to the surface. The engines dont shut off. And you could hear a pin drop. It worked. We are down. It is still transmitting. For the first time, unamerican spacecraft had achieved a soft landing on another Celeste Celeste tial part. And nasa had the answer to its question. Solid, andurface was suitable for landing by the apollo astronauts. This is actually my favorite surveyor image, because every single time i look at it, what i see in it is almost Neil Armstrong stepping off the lunar module. , its the shadow of surveyor one on the moon. Now, i do not want to be guilty of committing the sin of omission, so i want to acknowledge that the soviets were the first to land on the moon with lunar nine. It used airbags, which we adopted to go to mars. So it could be argued that this was actually a soft landing. At the time, it was not large enough to raise doubts about whether the lunar surface was able to bear the weight of an apollo lander, but it is comparison to make a between the lunar nine image of the moon and the surveyor image of the moon. We begin to understand that being first does not always necessarily mean being the best. What happens to the soviet union program, in part, was the first actually hindered their technological development. For completeness, i have to mention one more first by the soviets that few people know or remember. Would you believe me if i told you that the apollo eight notonauts would not were the first earthlings to fly to the moon and return to earth . Thats true. Thats a fact. Earthlingsthe first to accomplish that. Easy to make a joke of this, but this was a serious business, because it demonstrated that the soviets were very serious about sending cosmonauts to the moon. In the end, it never worked. Now, i would like to make one more connection between jpl and apollo. And it has to do with apollo 12. You haveobably if been watching any of the great documentaries that have been airing this week and on the that you probably know now the apollo 11 landed with only 20 seconds of fuel left, Something Like that. That is because the computer overshot where they were supposed to land, and they were headed towards a feel of field the boulders. Neil armstrong has to take control and find a safe place to land. The Mission Controllers were not going to let that happen again, they were going to pinpoint landing for apollo 12 and wanted to make sure they had a landmark to know where they landed. On the moon, everything was covered the same, so they decided to land next to surveyor three. In fact, what you see in front of you is my favorite alltime astronauts. The hide, on the horizon, you can see the lunar module, where they landed. He used sort of a hack saw take off the camera of surveyor three , and a piece of the scoop and brought it back. There was a sense, some scientists thought, with a ticket to the ground, that they found microbial life on the camera that had come from earth, on earth,neezed on it went to the moon, survived for three years and went back. That has been pretty much discredited now. They believe someone sneezed on it after it got back. [laughter] but whats important about it, this is the same time scientist werebig scientists beginning to understand that life is far more tenacious than we expected, and there was more possibility for searching for life elsewhere in the solar system. That, to me, is part of the legacy, also, of the moon landing, is that i believe, now to goe are working hard to the other moons in the solar system, to look for life, it is really one of the great quests of all time. To leave you with this image of two footprints one robotic, one human, because to go on the great quest we want to go on, it will take both. Thank you very much. [applause] outstanding. That was excellent. Thank you so much. With that historical background in hand, we will change gears to hear about some of the science of apollo. As you will hear, many of our elements in our understanding of the moon that we take to grant take for granted today were huge mysteries in 1969. Those mysteries required that new techniques and new scientific instruments be developed. After all, no one had ever studied a pristine sample from the moon before. Our next speaker is one of the people who helped fellow the new ways of studying the lunar samples from apollo 11. What he and his colleagues to completely transform our understanding of the moons history. Arden albee grew up in michigan and studied at harvard, receiving a phd in geology. He came to caltech in 1959 and retired after 50 years as a professor of geological and planetary sciences. During that time, and addition to teaching and research, he served as exteriors as chief scientist here at jpl. He served as project scientist for two years excuse me, for two Nasa Missions to mars. As well as serving on innumerable committees and boards for nasa and higher education. For a look at the science of the apollo lunar samples, please help me welcome dr. Barton albee. [applause] dr. Albee thank you. As you see, i have been around here for a long time. I wore this jacket because i found it in the back of the closet and there is a possibility i wore it 50 years ago. [laughter] wouldbee my daughters say, no way, but it has been back there for a long time. Mine is going to be a little bit more of, i was there, and i will tell you some funny things, difficult things, some mysteries. Very helileo, a used a very early telescope to provide our first real knowledge of the moon. In fact, till the arrival of spacecraft, other telescopic work did not add much more to that knowledge. Slide, we see the large, smooth, dark areas that seas. O called these areas are pitted with craters, which he called craters. He did name them as craters. The intensely cratered areas, which appear white in contrast to the dark, became known as terra, or highlands. Indeed, they were higher than the darkcolored basins. Many controversies about the moon, as we heard a minute to generations. For extreme positions were taken by gentlemen with great eloquence, but few fact. Now is theotten intense debate on such subjects as the depths to which a spacecraft might think into the sink into the lunar dust, the ability of water to shape the landscape, and whether radiation could be accumulated in the dust from the solar system and cause an explosion when an astronaut put his foot down in the soil. Finally, the presence of exotic organisms or water under the surface