The bright moon in the sky is not a white jade disk, but actually a satellite of the earth, which does not emit light itself, but reflects the sunlight. The Moon is about 380,000 kilometers away from Earth, with a mass of only 1.23% of Earth and a volume equivalent to only 2% of Earth.
From ancient times to the present, there are many legends about the moon, such as Chang'e Running Moon and Wu Gang Fa Gui. However, since the invention of astronomical telescopes, the moon has long lost its mysterious color, and it has been found that the moon is a bare rocky small object, the surface is covered with large and small craters, not white and flawless.
But there are not only craters on the moon, but also a lot of garbage. NASA scientists estimate that there are now at least 200 tons of garbage on the moon. How did all this garbage come about?
Some netizens said that these garbage on the moon are now space garbage floating over the earth, captured by the gravity of the moon, and then falling to the moon. The moon's gravitational pull is about 1/6 of the Earth's gravity, and a look at craters shows that it can attract some of the meteorites that crash into the earth to a certain extent, but the garbage on the moon does not come from this way.
In fact, the garbage on the moon was sent by humans. What the! Is it crazy to send garbage up for no reason? Non also! The current 200 tons of garbage on the moon are left over from the process of human exploration of the moon, and most of it is left by americans.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S.-Soviet space race intensified, and the United States sent 12 astronauts to the moon on six occasions in the past 10 years. In July 1969, Armstrong, along with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, sailed to the moon on Apollo 11, and as the first astronaut to land on the moon, he uttered the famous phrase that was destined to go down in history: "This is a small step for individuals, but a big step for mankind."
During these 6 missions, the astronauts did not stay on the moon for a few hours to take a photo and then return immediately, but stayed for dozens of hours, and had to complete some experiments, sampling and other work. During this time, a lot of waste is bound to be generated. Due to cost and technical considerations, of course, these wastes will not be brought back to the earth, of course, will not be incinerated, landfilled and other ways to deal with the earth, but directly left on the moon to become garbage.
Countries that are engaged in lunar exploration, including the United States, will leave some abandoned exploration equipment on the moon, including landers, lunar rovers and crashed probes. Of those more than 200 tons of garbage, their mass accounts for the majority, and the 12 American astronauts left only a small part of the household garbage (such as excrement).
There is almost no atmosphere on the moon, it is completely vacuum, there is no oxygen, and there is no wind, so the garbage left on the moon can exist for many years, and the mainland's Chang'e probe once photographed the lunar vehicle left on the moon by the United States decades ago.
Some netizens said that the temperature of the moon facing the sun can reach 160 degrees Celsius, while the temperature on the side of the sun facing back can be as low as minus 180 degrees Celsius, and it is also subject to cosmic ray radiation every day. In fact, it will not be destroyed. The environment of space junk over the Earth's orbit is similar, so many years, how can it not decrease but increase?
To be honest, the aerospace strength of the countries that can leave garbage on the moon is not bad, let alone sending probes, as long as they can use rockets to send garbage to the moon, it is already very good. After all, it still requires some technology to send the probe to the moon 380,000 kilometers away, and some probes have declared the end of the lunar orbit before they even reach the moon's orbit, let alone crashed into the moon.
At present, there are only a few countries and organizations in the world that have the ability to explore the moon, the main players in the last century are the Soviet Union and the United States, and now it is the United States and China, and the only ones that have successfully achieved a soft landing of probes on the moon are the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, as for Russia, Japan, India, ESA and Israel, they only launched a number of probes, and did not have the ability and motivation to continue exploration.
In 1959, the Soviet Union successfully launched the first lunar probe, Luna 1, which was also the first interstellar probe in human history. Although Luna 1 did not successfully land, it only skimmed the moon, but in the same year, Luna 2 successfully made a hard landing on the lunar surface. It was not until 1966 that the Soviet Union's Luna 9 and the U.S. Surveyor 1 probe achieved a soft landing on the lunar surface. At the end of the 1970s, with the end of the American Apollo moon landing program, lunar exploration also entered a low period, until the successful launch of the mainland Chang'e 1 artificial lunar satellite in 2007, the world's eyes began to turn to the moon again.
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