Incredible Moon mission facts the world still talks about

During the Apollo 11 mission, after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on the Moon, Aldrin was photographed standing in front of the lunar module.

In the photograph, Armstrong can be spotted in Aldrin’s visor, clicking his image.

The Apollo 11 Moon Landing mission almost ended in disaster when Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong noticed that a crucial circuit breaker switch on Panel 16 had accidentally snapped off. But no matter who was responsible, the switch had to be put back into place for the ascent engine to ignite and take them back home. Recalling the incident, Aldrin wrote in his book Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon, “I looked closer and jolted a bit. There, on the dust on the floor on the right side of the cabin, lay a circuit breaker switch that had broken off.” Thankfully, a quick piece of improvisation from Aldrin saved the day, as he used a felt-tip pen to push the circuit breaker switch back into place.

This is the image of the circuit switch that nearly ended the lives of the Apollo 11 Crew and the pen that Armstrong and Aldrin used to fix the mechanism and lift off successfully.

Moon rocks gathered during the Apollo missions fundamentally changed planetary science. It is because radiometric dating hinted that the samples (like the "Genesis Rock" from Apollo 15) were around 4.5 billion years old, which is significantly more than most of Earth's rocks. This age discrepancy forced scientists to rethink the history of our solar system and the formation of the Earth-Moon system. Adding to that, the rock samples brought back from the Moon showed that some Moon rocks are very similar to rocks found deep inside Earth, and these similarities suggested that the Moon was seemingly a part of Earth and later broke away millions of years ago. 

In the image, you can spot Harrison H. Schmitt standing next to a huge lunar boulder during the Apollo 17 mission at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. The image was captured on December 13, 1972.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, they left their bootprints on the lunar surface. The Moon lacks an atmosphere, and thus it does not experience wind, rain, or flowing water. Without these earthly forces of erosion, the iconic bootprints will remain unaltered in the lunar dust for millions of years.

The image shows a close-up view of an astronaut's footprint on the lunar soil. It was captured with the 70mm lunar surface camera during the Apollo 11 mission.

During the Apollo 17 mission in December of 1972, Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan discovered orange soil on the rim of Shorty crater in the Valley of Taurus-Littrow. The unusual orange soil was composed of tiny reddish and black glass balls and fragments formed from volcanic lava droplets. These droplets cooled rapidly in flight about 3.5 billion years ago, creating volcanic ash rich in iron metal rather than ordinary lunar soil.

The image captures the area on the rim of Shorty crater, in the Valley of Taurus-Littrow, where the Apollo 17 astronauts discovered the orange lunar soil.

Moon's gravity is ⅙ of Earth's surface gravity. Owing to this reason, astronauts struggled to land or move on the lunar surface. More so because pressurized spacesuits acted like stiff balloons. So instead of walking, they try to hop on the lunar surface. 

This image was captured by Michael Collins from lunar orbit during Apollo 11. In the image, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin unfurl the American flag on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

Apollo astronauts, after stepping back inside their lunar module, shared how the lunar dust smelled like lunar gunpowder. Research, however, has revealed that the dust from the surface of the Moon does not contain gunpowder. However, they are highly reactive and instantly oxidize upon contact with the moist, oxygen-rich air inside the spacecraft.

The image captures Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt collecting a soil sample from the lunar surface on December 13, 1972. During the process, Schmitt’s spacesuit was coated with lunar dust.

The flags that were planted on the lunar surface may have all turned white. It is probably because the presence of solar radiation has bleached them. The Moon lacks an atmosphere or ozone layer, so the planted flags had to endure the radiation for years, as a result of which the colors may have almost certainly faded away.  

The image was captured by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission when Buzz Aldrin was standing beside the planted US flag on the lunar surface.

Back on April 16, 1972, Charles Duke got on board the Apollo 16 as the Lunar Module pilot. Becoming the youngest person to walk on the lunar surface, Duke wanted to make his family a part of the mission, so the NASA astronaut left a family photo on the moon as a wholesome gesture towards his loved ones. The picture had his wife Dorothy, sons Thomas and Charles Duke III, and Duke himself.

The picture shows the Duke family photograph lying on the surface of the Moon, which was captured before they boarded the lunar module again during Apollo 16.