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On July 20 , 1969 , astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrinwalked on Earth ’s moonfor the first metre in human history . Four days later , they — along with Apollo 11 command mental faculty pilot burner Michael Collins — were locked up on an American aircraft newsboy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean .
The triumphant astronautswere in quarantine . Per aNASAsafety protocol written half a 10 earlier , the three lunar visitant were escort directly from their splashdown situation in the primal Pacific to a modify trailer aboard the USS Hornet , where a 21 - day closing off period start . The object ? To ensure that no potentially wild lunar microbes hitchhike back to Earth with them . [ 5 Strange , Cool Things We ’ve Recently Learned About the Moon ]
When humans landed on the moon (photographed here from the International Space Station), it changed the way that Earthlings thought about aliens, SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak told Live Science.
Of course , as NASA quick affirm , therewere no tiny alienslurking in the astronauts ' armpits or in the 50 pound sign ( 22 kilograms ) oflunar rock and soilthey had collected . But despite this absence seizure of literal extraterrestrial life , the Apollo 11 astronauts still may have succeeded in play aliens back to Earth in another way that can still be felt 50 years later on .
" Today , about 30 per centum of the populace thinks theEarth is being shoot the breeze by aliensin saucers , despite the grounds of that being very wretched , " Seth Shostak , fourth-year stargazer at the SETI Institute — a non-profit-making research center focused on the search for foreign life in the universe — told Live Science . " I think the moon landing place had something to do with that . "
Shostak has been searching for sign of intelligent living in the universe for most of his life ( and , fittingly , shares a birthday with the Apollo 11 landing place ) . Live Science recently speak with him to find out more about how the moon landing place changed the scientific community ’s following of aliens and the world ’s perception of them . Highlights of our conversation ( lightly edited for limpidity ) appear below .
Pres. Richard Nixon welcomes the Apollo 11 astronauts back to Earth after their historic voyage to the moon. The astronauts were confined within one of NASA’s Mobile Quarantine Facilities for 21 days to ensure they would not contaminate Earth with any potential lunar bacteria after their short lunar sojourn.
LS : What did the moonlight landing teach humans about extraterrestrial life ?
Seth Shostak : Not too much . By 1969 , most scientist expectedthe moon was go to be dead .
They knew for 100 years that the moon had no atmosphere , because when whizz pass behind the moon they just vanish ; if the moon had an atmosphere , star topology would get dimmer as they get closer to the lunar month ’s boundary . Plus , just look at the moonlight : There ’s no liquidity , temperature in the sun are hundreds of degrees , temperatures in the shade are minus hundreds of degrees — It ’s awful !
That said , I remember the moon landing place did affect the public sensing ofextraterrestrial animation . Up until then , Eruca vesicaria sativa and so forth were just skill fiction . But the Apollo missions showed that you could journey from one globe to another on a rocket — and peradventure aliens could , too . I cerebrate that , from the public ’s point of view , this meant that go to the stars was n’t always go to be just fiction . Suddenly , the creation was a little more open .
LS : In 1969 , did scientists think there might be aliens somewhere else in thesolar system ?
Shostak : Mars was the Great Red Hope , if you will , of extraterrestrial life in the solar system . People were very optimistic in 1976 when the Viking Lander plonk down onto Mars thatthere would be life . Even Carl Sagan thought there might be critters with leg and head running around there . scientist were kind of disappointed when it did n’t await like Mars had much life , either .
If you ask scientists today where ’s the best spot to look for life in the solar system , they’ll likely say Enceladusor one of the other moonlight of Jupiter or Saturn . There still could be microbiallife on Mars , but to find it you ’ll have todig a really abstruse holeand pull stuff up . Some of these moons , on the other helping hand , have geyser that shoot the material right into space , so you do n’t even have to land a spacecraft to detect it .
LS : What did the search for extraterrestrial intelligence ( SETI ) look like around 1969 ?
Shostak : Modern SETI experiment begin in 1960 with astronomerFrank Drakeand his Project Ozma , where he look for inhabited planets around two headliner using a radio telescope . [ After four years of searching , no placeable signals were observe . ]
But by 1969 , SETI was being done informally by hoi polloi who were working at telescopes , appear up the coordinates of nearby star and hoping topick up radio wavesin their unornamented time . But it was n’t really organized until the NASA SETI programme began in the seventies . It was a serious program that , at one head , had a budget of $ 10 million a year , so NASA could build up special receivers , get telescope time and all that sort of stuff and nonsense .
The NASA SETI program began keep in 1992 — and , in 1993 , Congress drink down it ! Ultimately , a democratic congressman from Nevada stamp out it . I find it ironic that a representative from Nevada — home ofArea 51and the extraterrestrial main road — vote down the NASA SETI program , when they profit more from the public fascination with unknown that anywhere else .
Originally published onLive Science .
