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Last year, the U.S. celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first humans to land and walk on the Moon during the era of the Apollo missions. The celebrations will continue for the next couple of years, commemorating the missions that ended in the early 1970s.

For many people, touting the historical Apollo missions was a walk down memory lane. For others, it was ancient history, and they wonder why we haven’t returned to the lunar surface. It’s a fair question. To answer, I always refer to the ongoing lunar explorations by such missions as the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Chinese space agency’s Chang’e rover (to name two of many). Certainly, there are plans for more missions, including human colonies, astronomy installations, lunar mining and others. The hope is to do these in the next couple of decades, if not sooner.

Memories of Apollo Missions

For the folks who remember the Apollo missions and watched them unfold on TV, it’s hard to believe that these things happened half a century ago. Many astronauts who took part in those missions have gone on to amazing careers, some have already passed away. All are octogenarians, at least. When they did the missions, they were young men, full of energy and ability to face the odds during their trips to the Moon.

Just recently, I ran across an article online about how one space enthusiast built his own Apollo command module. It took me back to my own childhood, when I did one, too. Oh, not as ornate as his. I mean, I was just a kid with some cardboard, but it still served a purpose for me.

Here’s how it came about. In seventh grade, I wanted to do something for a science presentation that would be better than anybody else could do. I was already space-mad and saw myself as an astronaut someday. So, I talked with my parents and my dad suggested we build an Apollo capsule. I figured it couldn’t be too hard—a little table-top Apollo capsule would be a great prop for my presentation.

Building my Own Apollo Mission

Daddy had other ideas. He wanted it to be something I could climb into and pretend to be an astronaut. I should note that it was also something HE dreamed about. He was always fascinated with flight, and he was probably more space-mad than me. So, my module wouldn’t be life-size, but it would accommodate a couple of folks for a short period of time. Making it life-size would have made it too big to put in the back of his pickup truck to take to school. The actual command module for Apollo was just over ten feet tall and nearly 13 feet across at the base. A bit unwieldy. But, we could come up with one that was a bit smaller and easy to transport.

So, I supplied the scaled size and some details about the exterior, and Daddy managed to scare up some light-weight lumber and some corrugated cardboard. Over the course of a few days, we got it built. I painted it a silvery color and put the letters “NASA” on the side. It turned out to have a little bit of “Gemini capsule” shape on the top, but with a broad bottom. Part of that was accidental, largely influenced by our building materials. No matter. It was my science project and it said “Apollo to the Moon” to me.

On the appointed day, Daddy brought it to school and I did my speech. All the guys in my little class wanted to climb inside the capsule. They did, and I still remember one of them looking out at me with a goofy grin on his face. Well, he was space-mad, too.

Apollo Mission Heritage

It’s been a long time since those days when a little pre-teen girl could build a mockup of a spacecraft with her Dad and use it as a prop in a talk. Oh, I still talk about space travel. I write about it. It’s been my career to share science, both astronomy and space exploration, with others.

And, I still think about what it would be like to go to space myself. I probably won’t ever get the chance to travel beyond Earth. That’s because there’s a long line of people younger than me who have higher “ticket numbers” than I do. What I DO hope is that kids these days are still dreaming of going to space. I’m pretty sure they are, in countries around the globe, from Europe, India and New Zealand to Japan and China. And, in the U.S., too.

Apollo Mission Influence Beyond the U.S.

Last year I went to China to work on a science museum project in Shanghai. My job was to develop an exhibition narrative. In one part of the exhibition, there is a distinct focus on the U.S. space missions of the ’60s. I don’t think it’s telling tales out of school to mention that there will be a mockup of a Moon landing a la the Apollo missions. It’s part of humanity’s common heritage. It made me feel very proud to see it included in the museum’s story.

The Chinese are quite fascinated with the space missions of the past. Of course, they have great plans of their own for space exploration. I like that. It means that all the work NASA and others did in the 60s is still paying off in a new century of exploration. China and others who want to send missions to the Moon and beyond are part of the Apollo heritage because those missions that begin in the late Sixties were not just to show off America’s might in space. They were also meant to inspire the dreamers of Earth—no matter where they live and grow up.

Taking the Dream of Apollo Forward

So, the next decades of space exploration will, as I mentioned, have a lunar focus. That’s important. The Moon is a good training ground. Once there, explorers can learn what it’s like to live on a world very much unlike Earth. If lunar explorers and colonists run into trouble, well, Earth isn’t very far away. And, the Moon has resources that can be used there, in cis-lunar space, and beyond. Apollo was the first attempt. That it was largely successful is thanks to bravery and ingenuity of the folks who worked on those missions. Their day has passed, and today, we salute them (or their memories, if they’ve passed on). They got us up the first rung of the ladder to space. What we do with the Apollo inspiration is up to us—all of us—on the good Earth.

Vera Rubin — Dr Vera Cooper Rubin, who (along with a team of observers) confirmed the existence of dark matter through continued observations of galaxy motions.

One of the stories coming from the American Astronomical Society meeting involves a topic that we’ve discussed here before: dark matter. Actually, it focuses directly on one of the astronomers closely associated with determining the existence of this mysterious “stuff”: Dr. Vera C. Rubin.

We’ve all heard of dark matter. It’s a weird, “invisible” material that makes up about a quarter of the mass in the universe. Nobody is quite sure what it is, but astronomers are sure it’s out there. The fact that we know even that much is due largely to Dr. Rubin and her efforts at finding it.

The dark matter story begins with a question: why don’t galaxies rotate at the velocity we expect them to? Over many years, Dr. Rubin and her team observed galaxy rotations. They compiled their data into what are called “rotation curves” and noticed that galaxies don’t always rotate the way they were expected to. Why?

Ultimately, the answer was “dark matter”. This is a type of cosmic “stuff” first suggested by Swiss astronomer Dr. Fritz Zwicky as “dunkel materie”. It could constrain the motions of objects in galaxies. It was largely unknown and theoretical then, but its effects are often observed today.

To honor Dr. Rubin’s work, the Large Scale Synoptic Telescope (LSST), currently under construction in Chile, will be renamed the NSF Vera C. Rubin Observatory (VRO). It’s the first national observatory named after a woman. VRO will be heavily involved in the search for dark matter and the even-more-mysterious dark energy.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón, in Chile, as seen on Dec. 18, 2019. Credit: LSST/Vera Rubin Observatory. — The newly renamed Vera C. Rubin Observatory after sunset in December 2019. Credit: LSST/Vera Rubin Observatory.

Tracking Galaxy Motions Leads to Dark Matter

Vera Cooper Rubin began her astronomy career at Vassar college at a time when women weren’t expected to do science. She went to Cornell University and Georgetown Universities, gaining her Ph.D. in 1954. Her thesis suggested that galaxies clumped together in clusters. Today, that’s accepted observational fact. Back then, galaxy clusters were still a theoretical and not-too-popular idea. Still, throughout her career, Dr. Rubin studied galaxies both individually and in clusters, and charted the motions of their stars.

In the 1960s, Rubin began working at the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Rubin’s work focused directly on galactic and extragalactic dynamics. Those subjects deal with the motions of galaxies both singularly and in clusters. In particular, Dr. Rubin studied the rotation rates of galaxies and the material in them. As I mentioned above, the team promptly discovered a puzzle: the predicted motion of a galaxy’s rotation didn’t match the observed rotation.

To understand why that might seem strange, it’s important to understand that galaxies do rotate. Astronomers expected all the material in a galaxy to rotate at rates dependent on their distance from the center. However, if they do it fast enough, they could fly apart, IF the combined gravitational effect of all their stars was the only thing holding them together. In her team’s observations, the rotation of some galaxies didn’t perform according to expectations. It implied that the mass of their stars wasn’t enough to keep them “together”. Why why didn’t they come apart? Something else had to be holding them together. The difference between the predicted and observed galaxy rotation rates was dubbed the “galaxy rotation problem”.

Dark Matter as a Vera C. Rubin’s Solution

Rubin and others decided that there was some kind of unseen mass in or around the galaxy. It was holding the galactic pieces and parts together. Based on many observations made by Rubin and her colleague Kent Ford, the mystery began to unravel. It turned out that galaxies must have at least ten times as much “invisible” mass as they do visible mass in their stars and nebulae.

Calculations showed that this invisible mass really existed. And, it might be that “dark matter” that Zwicky first suggested in the 1930s. Zwicky himself was scoffed at when he came up with the idea and later on, Rubin and her colleagues faced a lot of the same skepticism. Yet, it made sense when they invoked dark matter as an explanation for the odd rotation curves they calculated.

Dark Matter Focus from Chile

Dr. Vera C. Rubin (who died in 2016) spent much of her later life working on the dark matter problem. For that reason, the renaming of LSST in her honor is appropriate. The Vera Rubin Observatory will begin official operations in 2022. Its telescope will be mated to a state-of-the-art 3200-megapixel camera. Together with other instruments, astronomers will use it to study the universe in search of dark matter. It will also look for evidence of dark energy, study the bodies of the solar system, explore the transient optical sky, and map our home galaxy, the Milky Way. It’s a perfectly fitting tribute to a woman who persisted on research that others felt wasn’t important; not only WAS it important, it led to a new area of astrophysical research.

The Spacewriter's Ramblings

Celebrating Apollo Missions