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PAT: The Moon has still got a lot of secrets it's keeping.

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NATALIE: There's still so many questions locked up in these rocks.

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It's exciting times just to be studying them.

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DAVE: This is the only long-term information

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that we have from the

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surface of the Moon, are these data.
There's there's just nothing else.

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ERNIE: Where did all of this stuff come from? how did it form? What was the process?

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Does it happen all the time across the universe? Or are we somehow unique, or at least unusual?

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What does it all mean?

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NARRATOR: I'm Katie Atkinson and this is NASA Explorers: Apollo,

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where we tell stories about our Moon and the people who explore it.

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In the 1960s and '70s twelve
humans walked on the Moon over the

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course of six Apollo missions. About
400.000 Americans worked behind the

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scenes to get them there. There were also
millions of people around the world who

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listened, watched and celebrated
alongside them. They were all explorers.

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A quick note on why we're telling these
stories right now: Over 60 percent of

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Americans living today, myself included,
weren't born yet or were too young to

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remember the first Moon landings. They've never known a world where people

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couldn't walk on the Moon. Now there's a
new generation of explorers.

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Explorers who will witness the first woman walk on the Moon and see the first human mission

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to Mars. Some of us might even help get
them there.

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In the meantime, stories about where
we've been connect us to where we're going.

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What we learn now and in the
future builds on what we learned in the

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past, especially when it comes to
understanding our Moon.

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If you want to know what the Moon looks
like up close, Ernie Wright is the person

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to talk to. Even though he's never
been there, he's visualized just about

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every nook and cranny on the lunar
surface, sometimes down to a few feet

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He's one of NASA's resident experts on
Moon data.

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ERNIE: I work at the Scientific Visualization Studio at Goddard Space Flight Center. The studio uses data from

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NASA missions to create animations and
illustrations that explain that data.

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NARRATOR: Data sonification is the sound equivalent of what Ernie does visually.

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A chart lets you see data, a sonification
lets you hear it. You can listen to a

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data sonification over and over again
and hear something new each time.

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Every instrument, every sound means something. It's music and it's all based on data.

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What you're about to hear is a musical
representation of lunar science past-to-present.

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What you'll hear in the sonification is the amount of scientific activity

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associated with the Moon over
time. Ernie will walk you through it.

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ERNIE: The pitch of the melody is telling you sort of the amount of data that was returned

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about the Moon over time.There are several instruments that are

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establishing tempo. There's a clock sound
that that tells you about the progress

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of the months, and there are cymbals that
go off to mark the times of launches.

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During the Apollo era the pitch rises as
we learn more and more about the Moon

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and gather more data.

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And then there's this period in the
middle where it kind of falls, when we

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weren't sending people and we weren't
sending robotic missions. It falls off a little bit.

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And then it starts to rise
again to a crescendo in the modern era.

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In the sonification there are these two
peaks and the valley, but the other

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thing to take from it is that there is a
continuous note of exploration, that the

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sound doesn't really go away.

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The past and the present and the future
are all connected, and you get that sense

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when you're listening to it that while
there are variations in our level of

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interest, and in the amount of data that
we're gathering at any particular time,

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there's also a continuity, that once we
went there we didn't want to stop.

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I think what motivates us to answer, you
know, the question of the Moon's origin,

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or how it formed, is very basic. Because once we understand how the Moon

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was formed we know a lot more about how the Earth was formed, we know about how

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the solar system was formed. It's all to
do with this question of where did we

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come from? How did this happen?
Where did all of this stuff come from?

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How did it form? What was the process?
Does it happen all the time

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across the universe? Or are we somehow
unique or at least unusual? What does it all mean?

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NARRATOR: Answers to those big questions are

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within reach thanks in part to
modern-day exploration of our Moon.

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The rising pitch at the end of that
sonification, the crescendo, is a sign

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that we're learning. We're exploring more.
We're driving the pitch up into the future.

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NARRATOR: Before the Apollo missions, we knew almost nothing about the Moon.

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ERNIE: The state of our knowledge before Apollo was almost utter ignorance. We knew where it

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would be in the sky, but only
approximately. We didn't even know if it

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was wet or dry. We didn't know what it
was made of or how it related to the

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Earth, how it formed. We had no idea. We
didn't know what the craters were, and

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there was really no way to know until we
went there and sampled the surface and

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saw it up close.

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NARRATOR: During the Apollo era we
learned so much about the Moon, but astronauts only visited a few spots

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ERNIE: If you were exploring the Earth and you landed in six places near the equator,

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you would know that a whole lot about the Earth.

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So even after Apollo there was
a great deal to learn, but we knew so

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much more. We knew the right questions to ask, and so one of the motivations for

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, I think, was to answer some of those questions which

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had been lingering since the Apollo era.

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NARRATOR: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO,

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is a NASA spacecraft that's been
orbiting our Moon since 2009. LRO has

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mapped the Moon like never before.

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ERNIE: LRO is writing the lunar encyclopedia,

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the lunar atlas. It's the thing
that you go to first to look up all

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kinds of information about the Moon.

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NARRATOR: Thanks to LRO we've learned so much more

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about our Moon. In 2017 scientists
discovered that there's frost, frozen

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water, at the Moon's poles. We've also observed that the Moon is

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shrinking over time a result of it
cooling since its formation billions of

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years ago. Our knowledge of the Moon is
now so much more nuanced than it was 50 years ago,

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but NASA never stops learning. That really comes across in the data sonification.

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Let's listen to it again now the Ernie has broken down what each sound means.

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[clock ticking, music starts]

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JFK: But why, some say, the Moon?

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Why choose this as our goal?

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ARCHIVAL: Five, four, three, two, one, zero.

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ARCHIVAL: We have liftoff! We have liftoff!

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[consecutive launch audio from Apollo missions]

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JFK: And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain?

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Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?

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Why does Rice play Texas?

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[astronauts and engineers speaking]

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We choose to go to the Moon.

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[astronauts speaking]

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We choose to go to the Moon

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[rocket sounds]

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We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy.

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[astronauts laughing]

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But because they are hard.

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ASTRONAUT: Ok Houston, we have a problem here.

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Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.

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ARMSTRONG: That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

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Because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept.

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One we are unwilling to postpone.

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ARMSTRONG: Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.

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And one we intend to win.

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NARRATOR: In that version of the sonification, you heard tape from the archives,

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like selections from JFK speaking and
excerpts from Apollo mission audio.

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This kind of historical data helps us
understand the full impact of our

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journey to the Moon Holly McEntire agrees. She's a NASA

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archivist who believes that these
stories remind us where we came from

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and inspire us to keep looking forward.

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HOLLY: I think probably what I love most about

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being an archivist is just being able to
capture the human experience within

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those records. So sometimes we have
records that are very black and white,

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this is evidence of what happened, but my
favorite part are the records that kind

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of tell more of the human experience. So
maybe they're a memo from one specific

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person to another person, or maybe
they're someone's personal photographs

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that they took, or maybe it's an oral history. Those are the types of records

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that really drive me because I really just love to hear the human take

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on what happened.

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NARRATOR: So in that spirit, we're
asking you to help NASA tell the Apollo

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story. What do you remember about the
first Moon landing? Or what are you

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looking forward to as NASA prepares to
return to the Moon by 2024?

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So far we've received hundreds of
submissions from people all over the

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world. This first memory comes to us from France. Here's what Elena remembers.

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ELENA: Hello, NASA. I'm a retired American wildlife biologist living in France.

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I was 23 years old when the first people walked on the Moon. I was living in Seattle,

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Washington, and working as a legal
secretary. At that time I was an avid fan

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of the Star Trek series on television,
and I still am.

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I really wanted to see this historic
event. I couldn't quite believe that it

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wasn't a national holiday. But it wasn't,
so I called in sick at my law firm to be

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able to see it. At the time I didn't have
a television, so my boyfriend John and I

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had to go to a friend's house to watch
it. The friend only had a small black-and-white

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TV and he wasn't interested in
watching it at all.

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It was just John and I. But we got to
watch it and it was thrilling. I'm a firm

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supporter of the space program and I
hope that we continue to peacefully

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explore the universe to learn more about
life, the universe and everything.Thank

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you, NASA, for the opportunity to share in
this great celebration and anniversary.

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NARRATOR: Thank you, Elena, for sharing that story with us. We want you to send us your

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Apollo memory. Visit nasa.gov/apollostories to learn more.

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NOAH: You helped design how astronauts can stay alive and comfortable while working on the Moon.

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DENIS: Science is something you test, you
experiment, you get results. And that

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modifies the way we look at the world.

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ERNIE: Where did all of this stuff come from?

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How did it form? What was the
process? Does it happen all the time

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across the universe? Or are we somehow
unique, or at least unusual? What does it all mean?

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