dre b wrote:

That's a bright idea. Only one minor problem, and that is many
of NASA's alleged "men-on-the-moon" photos reveal non-parallel
shadows. If nothing else, this proves that more than one light
source was present when said photos were taken. I suppose that
we could pick through the NASA photos, and use only those that
show one consistent parallel light source, for what it's worth.


watch the shadows on a sunny day,shadows do not
align perfectly,so why should it on the moon...


Why do these idiots trot out the same, old, debunked whacko notions?

It's called willful ignorance. A tool of fools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_...#Examining_hoa
x_believers.27_arguments

Examining hoax believers' arguments

A brief treatment of some of the arguments and counter-arguments is given
below. For more detail and discussion see the external links.
[edit]

Missing data

1. Blueprints, telemetry data and other key documents that would help to
validate the missions are missing.

a) Dr. David Williams (NASA archivist at Goddard Space Flight Center) and
Apollo 11 flight director Gene Kranz both acknowledged that the Apollo 11
telemetry tapes are missing. Hoax proponents interpret this as support for the
case that they never existed.

* The website above only states that the Apollo 11 telemetry tapes are
missing - and not those of Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17. [2], [3] [12].

b) Hoax proponents say that blueprints for the Apollo craft and associated
equipment are missing.

* It is an urban legend that the Saturn V blueprints are missing [13],
[14]. They are not missing - they are on microfilm at the Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville, Alabama. In addition, some 2,900 cubic feet of Saturn
documents are stored in the Federal Archives in East Point, Georgia. [15]

[edit]

Photographs and films

Critics have said there are various issues with photographs and films
apparently taken on the Moon.

Challenges and responses

1. Issues with crosshairs (fiducials) that were etched onto the lenses of the
cameras.

a) In some photos, the crosshairs appear to be behind objects, rather than
in front of them where they should be, as if the photos were altered.

* In photography, the light white color (the object behind the
crosshair) makes the black object (the crosshair) invisible due to saturation
effects in the film emulsion. The film particles that ought to have been black
were exposed by light from the adjacent brightly lit particles. [16]
Ironically, this saturation effect would not happen if the crosshairs were
drawn on in post, and so is evidence of genuine photos. Attempting to alter
photos that already have crosshairs would make the compositing process far more
difficult.

The 'classic' Aldrin photo, with reticles not centered.
Enlarge
The 'classic' Aldrin photo, with reticles not centered.

b) In the 'classic' Aldrin photo, the reticle (etched crosshair on the
camera) is too low. Since the crosshairs are in a fixed position on all the
images, a lower reticle on this image indicates that the image has been
cropped. This is so even on the 70mm duplicate transparency NASA issues. The
70mm transparencies should show the entire 'full' image. Hoax proponents say
that the only explanation for this is if the original full transparency needed
to be cropped because of an embarrassing artifact like a piece of stage scenery
were in shot.

* The actual photo AS11-40-5903 or AS11-40-5903 high resolution is
chopped off just above Aldrin. Duplicate transparencies are not necessarily
exact copies of the original. The publicly-released version of the photo was
cropped and recomposed by NASA within hours of the film being made available,
with extra black space added at the top of most released versions for aesthetic
reasons. This Web page has NASA's history of the photo.

c) In other photos, the reticles are not in a straight line, or appear in
the 'wrong' place, indicating that the photo has been doctored. [4]

* The debunking Web site Clavius.org explains that the methodologies
that the conspiracy theorists propose for doctoring the photos with "wrong"
reticles are often contradictory and generally require absurd lengths to
explain the "inconsistencies" when there are reasonable explanations. In
particular, prints were often cropped and rotated, which causes the illusion of
reticles occurring off-center or "not straight".

2. The quality of the photographs is implausibly high.

* The astronauts were trained in the use of their gear, and shots and
poses were planned in advance as part of the mission. NASA selected only the
best photographs for release to the public, and some of the photos were cropped
to improve their composition. There are many badly exposed, badly focused and
poorly composed images amongst the thousands of photos that were taken by the
Apollo Astronauts. Many can be seen at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Photos
were taken on high-quality Hasselblad cameras with Zeiss lenses, using 70 mm
medium format film.

3. There are no stars in any of the photos, and astronauts never report seeing
any stars from the capsule windows. Yuri Gagarin commented that the stars were
astonishingly brilliant (see the external link below), and some NASA photos do
show stars. The stars in the photos may have been removed, because professional
astronomers would be able to use them to prove (through parallax measurements)
that the photos were not taken from the moon. (See, for instance, the photos
above.)
No stars visible observing The Moon and Mir from the Space Shuttle Discovery
Enlarge
No stars visible observing The Moon and Mir from the Space Shuttle Discovery
Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with Mir, no stars visible from the Soyuz
spacecraft
Enlarge
Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with Mir, no stars visible from the Soyuz
spacecraft
Zarya from the Space Shuttle, no stars visible.
Enlarge
Zarya from the Space Shuttle, no stars visible.

* Stars are also never seen in Space Shuttle, Mir, International Space
Station Earth observation photos, or even sporting events that take place at
night. The sun in the Earth/Moon area shines as brightly as on a clear noon day
on Earth, so cameras used for imaging these things are set for daylight
exposure, with quick shutter speeds in order to prevent overexposing the film.
The dim light of the stars simply does not have a chance to expose the film.
(This effect can be demonstrated on Earth by attempting to view stars from a
brightly lit parking lot. You can only see them if you somehow block out all
illuminated objects from your field of view, and then let your eyes adjust for
night vision. Otherwise, it is like taking a picture of the night sky with
exposure settings for a bright sunny day. Science fiction movies and television
shows do confuse this issue by depicting stars as visible in space under all
lighting conditions.) Stars were seen by every Apollo mission crew except for
the unfortunate Apollo 13 (they couldn't see the stars due to the fact that
oxygen and water vapor created a haze around the spacecraft). Stars were used
for navigation purposes and were occasionally also seen through cabin windows
when the conditions allowed. To see stars, nothing lit by sunlight could be in
the viewer's field of view. (Plait 2002:158-60).

* Stars are not dramatically brighter in space (above the Earth's
atmosphere). Professional astronomer and two-time space shuttle astronaut
Ronald A. Parise stated that he could barely see stars at all from space. He
had to turn out all of the lights in the shuttle to even glimpse the stars
(Plait 2002:160).

* The distance from the Earth to the Moon is very small compared to the
distance to the stars, so no parallax effect would have been observable. (The
nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is over 100,000,000 times farther away than the
Moon, and all other stars are much farther away than that.)

4. The color and angle of shadows and light are inconsistent.

* Shadows on the Moon are complicated because there are several light
sources: the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon itself. Light from these sources is
scattered by lunar dust in many different directions, including into shadows.
Additionally, the Moon's surface is not flat and shadows falling into craters
and hills appear longer, shorter and distorted from the simple expectations of
the hoax believers. More significantly, perspective effects come into play,
particularly on rough or angled ground. This leads to non-parallel shadows even
on objects which are extremely close to each other, and can be observed easily
on Earth wherever fences or trees are found. And finally, the camera in use was
fitted with a wide angle lens, which naturally resulted in subtle versions of
"fish eye" distortion (Plait 2002:167-72).

5. Identical backgrounds in photos are listed as taken miles apart.

* Detailed comparison of the backgrounds said to be identical in fact
show significant changes in the relative positions of the hills that are
consistent with the claimed locations that the images were taken from. Parallax
effects clearly demonstrate that the images were taken from widely different
locations around the landing sites. Claims that the appearance of the
background is identical while the foreground changes (for example, from a
boulder strewn crater to the Lunar Module) are trivially explained when the
images were taken from nearby locations, akin to seeing distant mountains
appearing the same on Earth from locations that are hundreds of feet apart
showing different foreground items. Furthermore, as there is no atmosphere on
the Moon, very distant objects will appear clearer and closer to the human eye.
What appears as nearby hills in some photographs, are actually mountains
several kilometers high and some 10-20 kilometers away. Changes in such very
distant backgrounds are quite subtle, and can be mistaken for no change at all.
As the Moon is also much smaller than the Earth, the horizon is significantly
nearer in photographs than Earthbound observers are used to seeing (an eye 1.7
m above completely flat ground will see the horizon 4.7 km away on Earth, but
only 2.4 km away on the Moon). This can lead to confusing interpretations of
the images. [17]

6. The number of photographs taken is implausibly high. When the total number
of official photographs taken during EVA of all Apollo missions is divided by
the total amount of time of all EVAs, one arrives at 1.19 photos per minute.
That is one photo per 50 seconds. Discounting time spent on other activities
results in one photo per 15 seconds for Apollo 11. This is even more remarkable
considering that many locations in the photographs are situated miles apart and
would have taken considerable travel time, especially in bulky pressure suits.
On top of this, the cameras were neither equipped with a viewfinder nor with
automatic exposure, which means that taking good pictures would take
considerably longer.

* The astronauts were well trained before the mission in the use of
photographic equipment. Since there were no weather effects to contend with and
the bright sunlight scenes permitted the use of small apertures with consequent
large depth of field, the equipment was generally kept at a single setting for
the duration of the mission. All that was required of the astronauts was to
open the shutter and wind the film to take a picture. In these conditions it is
possible to take two photographs a second. The camera was in a bracket mounted
on the front of their spacesuit, so they looked straight ahead at what they
wanted to photograph; no viewfinder was needed. Also, many of the photographs
were stereoscopic pairs or sets of panoramic images, taken immediately after
each other. The Apollo Image Atlas (external link below) shows that 70mm
magazine S of Apollo 11 has 122 photos taken during the walk on the surface -
less than one per minute. In addition, by looking at the photographs in
sequence, one can see that very often several of them were taken in rapid
succession.

7. The photos contain artifacts like the two seemingly matching 'C's on a rock
and on the ground (the rock is seen in NASA photos AS16-107-17445 and 17446).
They could be "prop continuity markers". Hoax proponents say that the first
copies of the photos released do show these marks, and that later releases may
have been doctored, and that attempts to debunk this problem focus exclusively
on one example on the rock, ignoring the second on the ground and the
coincidence of two, allegedly identical artifacts on the same photo. [18]

* The "C"-shaped objects are most likely printing imperfections not in
the original film from the camera, but only in some of the later generation
copies of AS16-107-17446 (and no copies of 17445). One suggestion, as seen in
the next link, is that when magnified the 'C' is a coiled hair present on the
lens of an enlarger when a print of the photo was taken for NASA's website.
(See this link and this link.) Here are the photographs:
* AS16-107-17445 (high resolution)
* AS16-107-17446 (high resolution)

8. A resident of Perth, Australia, pseudonymed Una Ronald, says she saw a Coke
bottle in the frame which was edited out of later versions, and says that many
articles appeared discussing this in The West Australian newspaper at the time.
Western Australia was the only place in the world that got their feed 'live'
without delay.

* No such newspaper reports can be verified. Una Ronald's true identity
has been kept secret, and her claims have only been relayed by one source.
Analysis shows that what she probably saw was in fact an optical artifact
caused by a reflection inside the camera lens. Its motion precisely mirrors
Aldrin's in the shot (see Coke Bottle and Una Ronald). The resolution of the
video transmissions from the moon were far below that of ordinary television,
and were converted to standard video by pointing a camera at a video screen,
similar to the old kinescope method of recording live TV shows -- a process
vulnerable to added reflections at the conversion site. Inverted ghost images
of Aldrin appear throughout the video.

9. The 1994 hardback version of Moon Shot by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton
contains a photograph of Shepard playing golf on the moon with another
astronaut. The picture is an obvious fake, there being no one else to take the
shot of the two, and the artwork was poor (such as the grapefruit sized "golf
ball"), and yet it was presented as if it were a real photo.
The photo mockup - the second astronaut is located in the 'fold' in the middle
of the scanned photo
Enlarge
The photo mockup - the second astronaut is located in the 'fold' in the middle
of the scanned photo
TV image of the actual scene
Enlarge
TV image of the actual scene

* The picture is a mockup made from several individual shots from the
Hasselblad cameras (which had already been stowed at that point), and does not
appear in the 1995 UK paperback version, although at no point is its nature
mentioned in the book. It was used in lieu of the only existing real images,
from the TV monitor, which the editors of the book apparently felt were too
grainy to present in a book's picture section.
* The Lunar Module and its shadow come from a left/right reversal of
AS14-66-9276. The astronaut on the right is a left/right reversal from AS14-66-
9240, the TV camera has been removed. The astronaut on the left is a left/right
reversal of AS14-66-9241, again with the TV camera removed. The flag is from
AS14-66-9232 or one of the similar photos. Some of the equipment came from a
photo similar to AS14-67-9361. The golf club, ball, and some shadows have been
added. See this webpage for the dialog and discussion of the activity that the
faked photo depicts.

Shepard duffed the first ball and hit the second one fairly cleanly. Houston
joked to Shepard "That looked like a slice to me, Al.", yet a slice is caused
by uneven airflow on the ball. This is impossible without an atmosphere.

* The ball moved only two or three feet. Shepard also stated that the
second ball went "miles and miles" (off-camera of the TV broadcast), which was
clearly a joke, like the comment about the slice. Shepard later said, "I
thought, with the same club-head speed, the ball's going to go at least six
times as far. There's absolutely no drag, so if you do happen to spin it, it
won't slice or hook 'cause there's no atmosphere to make it turn." [19] A slice
comes from hitting the ball off the outer end of the club-head, versus hitting
it square in the middle of the club-head, versus hooking it, which is hitting
it off the inner end of the club-head. Shepard did, in effect, "slice" the ball
at first, and as he notes, being in the virtually non-existent lunar
atmosphere, the ball did not curve laterally as an earthbound slice would.

* See ALSJ, click on "Apollo 14" on the left, under "Second EVA", click
on "A nice day for a game of golf", and scroll down to "135:08:17", which has a
transcript of the actual dialog. Just above "135:08:17" is a video clip of the
golfing sequence. Below "135:09:26" is a discussion of the mock-up photo in
Moon Shot.

[edit]

Ionizing radiation and heat

Challenges and responses

1. The astronauts could not have survived the trip because of exposure to
radiation from the Van Allen radiation belt and galactic ambient radiation (see
Radiation poisoning).

* The Moon is ten times higher than the Van Allen radiation belts. The
spacecraft moved through the belts in just 30 minutes, and the astronauts were
protected from the ionizing radiation by the metal hulls of the spacecraft. In
addition, the orbital transfer trajectory from the Earth to the Moon through
the belts was selected to minimize radiation exposure. Even Dr. James Van
Allen, the discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts, has rebutted the claims
that radiation levels were too dangerous for the Apollo missions. Dosimeters
carried by the crews showed they received about the same cumulative dosage as a
chest X-ray or about 1 milligray. [20] Plait cited an average dose of less than
1 rem, which is equivalent to the ambient radiation received by living at sea
level for three years.(Plait 2002:160-62)

* The radiation is actually evidence that the astronauts went to the
Moon. 33 of 36 of the Apollo astronauts have early stage cataracts that have
been shown to be caused by radiation exposure to cosmic rays during their trip.
(see Ms. Irene Schneider on The Space Show), the November 20, 2005 show. (This
statistic cannot be completely correct, since only twenty-four astronauts have
been to the moon, see List of Apollo Astronauts.)

2. Film in the cameras would have been fogged by this radiation.

* The film was kept in metal containers that prevented radiation from
fogging the film's emulsion. (Plait 2002:162-63) In addition, film carried by
unmanned lunar probes such as the Lunar Orbiter and Luna 3 was not fogged.

3. The Moon's surface during the daytime is so hot that camera film would have
melted.

* There is no atmosphere to efficiently couple lunar surface heat to
devices such as cameras not in direct contact with it. In a vacuum, only
radiation remains as a heat transfer mechanism. The physics of radiative heat
transfer are thoroughly understood, and the proper use of passive optical
coatings and paints was adequate to control the temperature of the film within
the cameras; lunar module temperatures were controlled with similar coatings
that gave it its gold color. Also, while the Moon's surface does get very hot
at lunar noon, every Apollo landing was made shortly after lunar sunrise at the
landing site. During the longer stays, the astronauts did notice increased
cooling loads on their spacesuits as the sun continued to rise and the surface
temperature increased, but the effect was easily countered by the passive and
active cooling systems. (Plait 2002:165-67)

4. The Apollo 16 crew should not have survived a big solar flare firing out
when they were on their way to the Moon. "They should have been fried".

* No large solar flare occurred during the flight of Apollo 16. There
were large solar flares in August 1972, after Apollo 16 returned to Earth and
before the flight of Apollo 17. [21]

[edit]

Transmissions

Challenges and responses

1. The lack of a more than 2 second delay in two way communications at a
distance of a 250,000 miles (400,000 km).

* The round trip light travel time of more than 2 seconds is apparent
in all the real-time recordings of the lunar audio, but this does not always
appear as expected. There may be some documentary films where the delay has
been edited out. Principal motivations for editing the audio would likely come
in response to time constraints or in the interest of clarity. [22]

2. Typical delays in communication were on the order of half a second.

* Claims that the delays were only on the order of half a second are
unsubstantiated by an examination of the actual recordings.

3. The Parkes Observatory in Australia was billed to the world for weeks as the
site that would be relaying communications from the Moon, then five hours
before transmission they were told to stand down.

* The timing of the first Moonwalk was moved up after landing. [23]

4. Parkes supposedly provided the clearest video feed from the Moon, but
Australian media and all other known sources ran a live feed from the United
States.

* While that was the original plan, and, according to some sources, the
official policy, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) did take the
transmission direct from the Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek radio telescopes.
These were converted to NTSC television at Paddington, in Sydney. This meant
that Australian viewers saw the Moonwalk several seconds before the rest of the
world. [24] See also The Parkes Observatory's Support of the Apollo 11 Mission,
from "Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia" (The events
surrounding the Parkes Observatory's role in relaying the live television of
man's first steps on the moon were portrayed in a slightly fictionalized 2000
Australian film comedy The Dish.)

5. Better signal was supposedly received at Parkes Observatory when the Moon
was on the opposite side of the planet.

* This is not supported by the detailed evidence and logs from the
missions. [25]

[edit]

Mechanical issues

Challenges and responses

1. No blast crater appeared from the landing.

* No crater should be expected. The Descent Propulsion System was
throttled very far down during the final stages of landing. The Lunar Module
was no longer rapidly decelerating, so the descent engine only had to support
the module's own weight, which by then was greatly diminished by the near
exhaustion of the descent propellants, and the Moon's lower gravity. At the
time of landing, the engine's thrust divided by the cross-sectional area of the
engine bell is only about 1.5 PSI (Plait 2002:164), and that is reduced by the
fact that the engine was in a vacuum, causing the exhaust to spread out. (By
contrast, the thrust of the first stage of the Saturn V was 459 PSI, over the
area of the engine bell.) Rocket exhaust gases expand much more rapidly after
leaving the engine nozzle in a vacuum than in an atmosphere. The effect of an
atmosphere on rocket plumes can be easily seen in launches from Earth; as the
rocket rises through the thinning atmosphere, the exhaust plumes broaden very
noticeably. Rocket engines designed for vacuum operation have longer bells than
those designed for use at the earth's surface, but they still cannot prevent
this spreading. The lunar module's exhaust gases therefore expanded rapidly
well beyond the landing site. Even if they hadn't, a simple calculation will
show that the pressure at the end of the descent engine bell was much too low
to carve out a crater. However, the descent engines did scatter a considerable
amount of very fine surface dust as seen in 16mm movies of each landing, and as
Neil Armstrong said as the landing neared ("...kicking up some dust..."). This
significantly impaired visibility in the final stages of landing, and many
mission commanders commented on it. Photographs do show slightly disturbed dust
beneath the descent engine. And finally, the landers were generally moving
horizontally as well as vertically until right before landing, so the exhaust
would not be focused on any one surface spot for very long, and the compactness
of the lunar soil below a thin surface layer of dust also make it virtually
impossible for the descent engine to blast out a "crater". (Plait 2002:163-65)

2. The launch rocket produced no visible flame.

* Hydrazine (a fuel) and dinitrogen tetroxide (an oxidizer) were the
Lunar Module propellants, chosen for their reliability; they ignite
hypergolically -upon contact- without a spark. Hypergolic propellants happen to
produce a nearly transparent exhaust. Hypergolic fuels are also used by several
space launchers: the core of the American Titan, the Russian Proton, the
European Ariane 1 through 4 and the Chinese Long March, and the transparency of
their plumes is apparent in many launch photos. The plumes of rocket engines
fired in a vacuum spread out very rapidly as they leave the engine nozzle (see
above), further reducing their visibility. Finally, most rocket engines use a
"rich" mixture to lengthen their lifetimes. While the excess fuel will burn
when it contacts atmospheric oxygen, this cannot happen in a vacuum.

3. The rocks brought back from the Moon are identical to rocks collected by
scientific expeditions to Antarctica.

* Chemical analysis of the rocks confirms a different oxygen isotopic
composition and a surprising lack of volatile elements. There are only a few
'identical' rocks, and those few fell as meteorites after being ejected from
the Moon during impact cratering events. The total quantity of these 'Lunar
Meteorites' is small compared to the more than 840 lb (380 kg) of lunar samples
returned by Apollo. Also the Apollo lunar soil samples chemically matched the
Russian luna space probe's lunar soil samples.

4. The presence of deep dust around the module; given the blast from the
landing engine, this should not be present.

* The dust around the module is called regolith and is created by
ejecta from asteroid and meteoroid impacts. This dust was several inches thick
at the Apollo 11 landing site. The regolith was estimated to be several meters
thick and is highly compacted with depth. In an atmosphere, we would expect a
rocket engine to blast all the surface dust off the ground for tens of meters.
However, dust was only removed from the area directly beneath the Apollo
landing engine. The important observation here is "atmosphere". Powerful
engines set up turbulence in air which lifts and carries dust readily, far
beyond the engine itself. However, in a vacuum, there is no air to disturb.
Only the actual engine exhaust's direct pressure on the dust can move it.
(Plait 2002:163-65)

5. The flag placed on the surface by the astronauts flapped despite there being
no wind on the Moon.

* The astronauts were moving the flag into position, causing motion.
Since there is no air on the Moon to provide friction, these movements caused a
long-lasting undulating movement seen in the flag. There was a rod extending
from the top of the flagpole to hold the flag out for proper display. The
fabric's rippled appearance was due to its having been folded during flight and
gave it an appearance which could be mistaken for motion in a still photograph.
The top supporting rod of the flag was telescopic and the crew of Apollo 11
found they could not fully extend it. Later crews did not fully extend this rod
because they liked how it made the flag appear. A viewing of the videotape made
during the moonwalk shows that shortly after the astronauts remove their hands
from the flag/flagpole, it stops moving and remains motionless. At one point
the flag is in view for well over thirty minutes and it remains completely
motionless throughout that period (and all similar periods). (See inertia) See
the photographs below.

Buzz Aldrin saluting the flag (Note the fingers of Aldrin's right hand can be
seen behind his helmet)
Enlarge
Buzz Aldrin saluting the flag (Note the fingers of Aldrin's right hand can be
seen behind his helmet)

Photo taken a few seconds later, Buzz Aldrin's hand is down, head turned toward
the camera, the flag is unchanged
Enlarge
Photo taken a few seconds later, Buzz Aldrin's hand is down, head turned toward
the camera, the flag is unchanged

6. The Lander weighed 17 tons yet the astronauts feet seem to have made a
bigger dent in the dust.

* The astronauts were much lighter than the Lander, but their boots
were also much smaller than the lander's pads. As pressure is what makes the
'dent', and is force over an area, you make the pressure much smaller by making
the area a little larger. An example would be driving a car (heavy) on sand,
then getting a person (light) to walk on the same surface. You will often find
the depth of tracks to be about the same.

7. The F-1 rocket engine used in the first stage of the Saturn V was too
unreliable (Kaysing).

Early problems with the F-1 were solved in the early 1960s. Five F-1
engines were used in the first stage of the Saturn V. Thirteen launches of the
Saturn V were made, and no F-1 engine failed on any flight. [26]

[edit]

Moon rocks

The extensive payload of moon rocks brought back from the Moon are still
analyzed by scientists to this day as some of the only samples returned from
another body in the solar system. Hoax proponents have argued that Wernher von
Braun's trip to Antarctica two years prior to Apollo missions was to collect
lunar meteorite rocks to be used as fake moonrocks. Because von Braun was a
former Nazi, it is suggested, he would have been susceptible to pressure to
agree to the conspiracy in order to protect himself from recriminations over
the past. [citation needed]

While it is true that rocks dislodged from the Moon by meteoric impacts
occasionally land on Earth, and a handful of rocks believed to be from the moon
and Mars have been found in Antarctica, there are only a few of these objects
in our collections and the rest of the rocks collected on Earth are entirely
different in composition and in their detailed structures from those found and
returned from the Moon. Furthermore, detailed analysis of the lunar rocks show
no evidence of their having been on Earth prior to their return during Apollo.
They are also entirely consistent with having been on the Lunar surface since
their formation many billions of years ago with the detailed geological context
that they were documented to have been sampled from. They are almost entirely
composed of heavily shocked rocks consistent with the meteoroid environment on
the Moon's surface. Many of them are older than any rocks found to date on
Earth.

The first Antarctic meteorite discovery was made by the Australian explorer
Douglas Mawson in 1912. [27] A later expedition was mounted in 1969 by a
Japanese team. The first United States led team began searches in the mid to
late 1970s and discovered more meteorites in 1981, which were identified as
being similar to the lunar samples returned by Apollo which in turn are similar
to the few grams of material returned from the Moon by Soviet sample return
missions (see ANSMET). The total collection of identified Antarctic lunar
meteorites presently in the collection at JSC amounts to only about 2.5
kilograms, less than 1% of the 381 kilograms of moonrocks and soil returned by
Apollo.

The physics of the process is well understood. It is not favourable in orbital
dynamics for an object to leave the Moon and impact Earth, the most favourable
outcomes are the complete escape of the object (thus entering solar orbit)
directly, or a chaotic orbit around the Moon, Earth or both which eventually
results in the object being ejected from the system or re-impacting the Moon.
The Moon being the least massive object, it becomes a sort of "kink" in Earth's
gravity well, and this makes it more likely than Earth to be struck by any
incoming object.
















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