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| Armstrong, Collins & Aldrin - Photo NASA |
Fifty years after
the arrival of man on the Moon, a couple of European sexagenarians remember the
first landing:
“Do you know what
day is today?”
“Saturday, why?”
“I mean the date.”
“July 20th 2019, what
about it?”
“Exactly fifty
years ago, man reached the Moon.”
“Oh yeah! But
wait, there is something wrong here, didn’t they arrive on the twenty-first?”
"No, it was the
twentieth, but it took them over six hours to get down from the capsule. By
then, in Europe it was the twenty-first, but in the United States it was still the
twentieth.”
“True! I remember it
well. I saw it on TV. I was ten years old.”
“The image was
blurred.”
“Yes, in black and
white.”
“By then, few
people had color TV.”
“Even if one of
your friends had, I don’t think a ten years old would be allowed to go watch TV
somewhere else at four in the morning.”
“Do you want to
hear my secret?”
“I do.”
“That night I didn’t
get up at four. I slept the whole night and didn’t see it until the morning.
They gave it again.”
“Do you want to hear
my secret?”
“Of course.”
“The same happened
to me.”
Laughter. A little
later, the husband says:
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| Image of the Mars surface taken by Viking-1 |
“By the way, the
descent of Neil Armstrong and Mike Collins on the Moon is not the only anniversary
celebrated today. It’s also the 43rd anniversary of the day when the Viking 1 capsule
landed on Mars.”
“True, I knew it.
But that wasn’t the first ship that landed on Mars, right?”
“No, the first one
was Russian, the Mars 3 capsule, four years before.”
“Hey, do you think
NASA chose the date knowingly, to make it the same as the anniversary of the
arrival to the Moon?”
“I have no idea,
but I wouldn’t be surprised.”
During the six
Apollo expeditions that landed on the Moon, the astronauts collected Moon
rocks; took many photographs; carried out experiments, such as exploding
charges and detecting their seismic effects; and installed instruments, which
sent data to Earth until 1977, when the program was canceled by NASA.
Some of the data
then obtained are still pending of research. The problem is, in 50 years, some
of the data has been lost, or it’s necessary to find old magnetic tapes and
interpret their content. As a result of this research, a mysterious warming of
the Moon subsoil between 1971 and 1977 has been detected. It’s attributed to
human action: when walking on the Moon, the footsteps of the astronauts would
have removed the ground, which appears darker than the surrounding areas, and
therefore absorbs more sunlight and causes a temperature increase of two or
three degrees in the surface, which is then partially transmitted to the
subsoil. It’s curious that the presence of man on the Moon has caused a climate
change there, even though quite localized and very small.
Manuel Alfonseca
Adapted from my novel The Mystery of the Haunted House
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