Text/Wang Xinxi
At present, China has announced that 18 countries will receive lunar soil brought back by Chang'e-6, namely Russia, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Finland, France, Belgium, Japan, Canada, India, Australia, and other 18 countries, without the United States.
In response, NASA said that China did not directly invite it to participate in lunar soil research, and our response was that the United States seemed to have forgotten the existence of the Wolf Clause. The clause prohibits the United States from conducting any joint scientific research activities with China related to NASA or coordinated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and even prohibits all NASA facilities from hosting "official Chinese visitors." This is also the reason why China does not invite the United States.
And the United States has now put forward a new demand, the Global Times quoted Hong Kong's South China Morning Post as reporting that a top Chinese scientist revealed that the United States and China are discussing how to protect Armstrong's footprints on the moon and other historical sites of the first humans to set foot on the planet. It also includes the American flag planted on the moon in 1969 by the astronauts of the Apollo 11 spacecraft.
A deputy chief engineer of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said there was no reason to worry that the Yutu lunar rover would destroy the first footprint of human destruction on Earth.
So the question is, even if the United States landed on the moon and more than 55 years have passed, how can it be sure that its footprints on the moon over the years are complete? What if you don't find your footprints without being disturbed by other factors? Do moon footprints last for 50 years?
In fact, theories are possible. According to records, in 1969, when astronaut Armstrong carefully stepped on the surface of the moon, he left footprints 32.5 centimeters long, 15 centimeters wide, and 0.5 centimeters deep. If this footprint is real, then theoretically there will be no change until now.
Here's why:
The environment of the moon is different from that of the earth, the weather on the earth is changeable, once it is windy and rainy, the footprints on the ground may disappear in a few days, but there is no atmosphere on the moon, so there are no weather changes such as wind, rain or snow, and there are no complex geological disasters like our earth, such as earthquakes and volcanoes.
Second, the Moon usually produces only minor moonquakes due to periodic tidal stress changes as it orbits the Earth, and because such moonquakes are so slight, they have little to no effect on footprints on the Moon's surface.
In addition, human beings have not yet found volcanic activity on the moon, so the influence of volcanoes on footprints can be ruled out. In addition, the strong sunlight causes the rocks on the moon to gradually break apart due to the temperature upheaval, but it has little effect on the dust on the moon's surface.
Although the presence of solar wind and cosmic particle streams in the universe can have a slight effect on the surface of the moon, these streams of particles will take longer to wear away a millimeter of lunar dust than human history, which means that Armstrong's footprints will not theoretically disappear.
Why did China's Chang'e-6 find no traces of the Apollo moon landing?
But the problem is that during the live broadcast of the Chang'e-6 mission at the Chinese lunar exploration station, the general designers of the project mentioned that they did not find any traces of the Apollo moon landing.
The reason for this is that all six landing sites of the Apollo program are located in the lunar sea region near the lunar equator. Given the technology of the time, these locations were relatively easy to maneuver, the terrain was relatively flat, and the age of the topsoil and rocks was concentrated between 4.2 billion and 3.2 billion years ago. It can be understood that many of the moon landings of the Apollo program were deserts and plains where the moon landed. Most of what they get is ancient weathering from the surface of the moon.
The landing site of the Chinese probe is located in the Lumke Mountains, an area with relatively young soil and rocks. The landing zone contains a large amount of basalt from 2 billion to 1.3 billion years ago. The drill bits carried by the Chang'e probe can also obtain deep cores. In short, a Chinese probe landed in a more complex mountainous area of the moon. What they obtained was material from ancient volcanic eruptions deep in the moon.
Therefore, Chang'e-6 is not orbiting the Apollo moon landing site, and it is extremely difficult to cross most of the moon to find traces of the United States landing on the moon at the equator decades ago.
So the question is, if this footprint disappears, what are the possibilities?
The first is that the soil on the surface of the moon will gradually disappear after millions of years of natural disappearance, under the action of cosmic solar wind, high-energy rays and weak weathering.
The second is the disappearance of meteorite impact events, which is accidental, and the large and small craters on the surface of the moon indicate that the possibility of being hit by meteorites also exists. These traces may be hidden by natural factors such as meteorite impacts on the lunar surface and lunar dust deposition, and the shaking of the earth's crust caused by meteorite impacts can also cause footprints to deform or even disappear.
The third is the destruction and disappearance of footprints caused by human activities on the lunar surface. However, as mentioned earlier, the landing sites between China and the United States are too far away to exist for the time being.
The fourth possibility, of course, is that footprints simply don't exist.
We don't know what other purposes are behind the tangled footprints of the United States. Of course, from the current point of view, the statement that the United States wants to preserve the footprints of American astronauts is actually very difficult to find, and it is deliberately causing problems for China.
Of course, China spent hundreds of billions of dollars to land on the moon for scientific exploration and even to establish a lunar base, not to prove whether the United States has landed on the moon or not. The U.S. demand to protect the lunar footprint reflects China's rise as one of the world's space leaders, in the eyes of Chinese aerospace engineers. "When you are strong, someone will come to you to coordinate, when the moon landing is the exclusive technology of the United States, you don't have to think about who owns the minerals on the moon, you don't have to think about the issue of historical relics, now China can go to the moon, the United States has this heavy worry."
The best way to break the isolation is to increase one's own strength, and when the strength is strong, the isolation of the other party becomes a cocoon, which may be the inspiration that the United States claims that it has not received an invitation from China to study lunar soil, and hopes that China will protect the footprints of American astronauts on the moon.
Author: Wang Xinxi, Senior Reviewer of TMT This article is not reproduced without permission