The Moon Page #3

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few tentative steps from the lunar module,

the astronauts on later missions

travelled miles across the surface.

They spent days at a time on the

moon, visiting different locations,

collecting samples

of rock and soil,

and setting up

scientific experiments.

Guess what we just found?

I think we found what we came for.

Just old rock, eh? Yes, sir.

But down on Earth,

with each mission,

the public interest

was starting to wane.

By the time it came to Apollo 17,

NASA even had to pay the American

TV networks to cover the mission.

By the fourth or fifth time

that we had gone to the moon,

it was probably

page two or three news.

You know,

it certainly wasn't headline..

There is more soil!

People were getting bored

with going to the moon.

Once you've seen astronauts

collect rocks for a few times,

it ceases to fascinate.

Going to the moon had been done.

And there was a feeling that

it was now time to do other things.

There's a state of apathy in the United

States now. People just don't care.

I think that we are spending

too much money on the moon.

I think they could use the time, energy and

money better here in the United States.

There's lots of room

for improvement here.

Rather than spend all that money exploring

space when people are starving here,

that money could be put to very

good use in improving life here.

When we finally got there,

it turned out our moon

didn't harbour life or even water.

It was not the home of the Gods

or rampaging herds of bison.

It was a barren and bleak place -

a dead rock in the sky.

We'd built it up in our imagination

for tens of thousands of years.

And the disappointment

was crushing.

People thought maybe...

there were people alive

on the moon,

maybe there are things up there.

But what we learned when we got

there is what we saw was the case.

It's a very cold place

and it's desolate and it's not capable

of supporting life as we know it.

Hey, team...

I was strolling

on the moon one day...

When astronaut Gene Cernan stepped off

the lunar surface for the last time,

it was no giant leap for mankind,

but the last stumble

of a dying era.

NASA cancelled

the next three moon missions

and quietly drew

the Apollo programme to a close.

Cernan was the last human being

ever to walk on the moon.

To this day, no-one has returned.

The love affair was over.

But although the public's relationship

with the moon had gone sour,

for a small band

of dedicated scientists,

the romance was just beginning.

They now had actual pieces

of the moon to study.

Nearly 400 kilos of lunar rock

had been brought back

by the astronauts.

They hoped that these rocks would unlock

the unanswered mysteries of the moon.

Because, despite the moon landings,

scientists still didn't know

the answer to the big questions.

Where had the moon come from?

And how had it formed?

One of those starry-eyed

young scientists was Gary Lofgren,

a geologist working for NASA.

He was given the job of cutting

up each sample ready for study.

You just had no idea

what you were going to see,

looking at these really

strange-looking rocks

that were just jumbles of debris.

It was a chance to really

look at them closely,

to not actually touch them,

but come very close,

and we realised we'd never seen anything like

that on Earth, or never recognised it on Earth.

Most scientists had assumed that

the moon would be similar to Earth.

There'd be a mixture

of young and old rocks,

formed in many different ways.

They were in for a surprise.

It turned out that our thinking

about the moon was really wrong.

Science had not done a very good job of

guessing what the moon was going to be like.

People did think

it was probably fairly old,

but they didn't realise it was

as old as it turned out to be.

We found rocks that are almost

four and a half billion years old,

almost the age of our solar system.

Some of these rocks formed just 50-100 million

years after the beginning of the planet.

We just don't find rocks that old

on Earth.

The moon was an ancient,

fossilised world.

Its rocks hadn't changed

for billions of years.

Scientists were thrilled.

Basically, the surface of the moon kind

of froze roughly three billion years ago

and preserved the first one and a

half billion years of its history.

The moon tells us very much about the

early history of our solar system.

It's probably one of the best recorders

of the early history of our solar system.

This ancient fossil

was a scientific gold mine.

Because the moon

was so well-preserved,

it meant scientists could finally answer

the question that had come to obsess them.

How was the moon formed?

At the time,

there were two competing theories.

The first was that the moon and the

Earth were formed at the same time,

from the same cloud

of dust and gas.

The other theory was that the moon

was nothing do with the Earth,

but was wandering alone in space

until the Earth sucked it in

with the power of its gravity.

But the rocks themselves didn't

seem to support either theory.

They were different enough

from rocks on Earth

to make it unlikely they were

all formed at the same time.

But they had enough similarities to make it equally

unlikely that the moon was completely foreign.

Eventually, scientists came up with a new

theory that explained these strange rocks.

It was a brutal tale.

It takes us back

four billion years,

to when the solar system

was a young and volatile place.

There were many planets

and asteroids circling the sun.

One of these was a young Earth.

But there was also another

young planet, a bit smaller.

The two were on a collision course.

Eventually, they crashed together.

It was the biggest bang

the solar system had ever seen.

The impact was so massive

that it spewed out millions

of tons of molten rock and gases.

As this debris circled the Earth,

it came together, forming

a separate body - our moon.

When it first formed, the moon was ten times

closer to the Earth than it is today.

So it appeared

much bigger in the sky

and its gravitational pull

was much stronger.

But, over time, it slowly

drifted away from the Earth

to its present position, about a

quarter of a million miles away.

And there, its orbit seemed

to have stabilised,

its distance from Earth

fixed for all time.

But a little-known Apollo project

has blown that cosy theory away.

Deep in the wilds of West Texas,

Jerry Wiant coaxes his elderly motorbike

up to the top of the Davies Mountains.

He and his trusty bike

have made this same journey to work

every night

since the Apollo programme.

He is on his way to the Texas

Laser Ranging station.

This small outpost is one of only

three of its kind in the world.

We're the last

living Apollo project.

Many people think,

"The Apollo projects?

"Oh, they're dead and gone."

That's not true.

We're still getting valuable data.

Scientists all over the Earth

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