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Images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera show that five of the six American flags planted on the moon during the Apollo missions are still upright, but their condition is unclear. The missing flag was brought down by the Apollo 11 lunar module explosion. The flags may have disintegrated due to the harsh lunar climate.
It’s been more than 40 years since astronauts sank American flags into lunar soil. But do those starry banners still fly? Images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera show that five of the six are still upright, based on an analysis of the shadows cast by the flagpoles on the lunar surface, but the condition of the flags themselves is unclear. The missing flag was brought down by the Apollo 11 lunar module explosion, as reported by astronaut Buzz Aldrin after the historic first landing in July 1969. After each of the six Apollo missions, culminating in Apollo 17 in 1972, the astronauts they left an American flag as a symbol of US scientific science and engineering achievement.
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Could the flags survive the fury of the lunar climate, with its huge 14-day temperature swings and intense ultraviolet radiation? Scientists say the flags must be badly faded, if they haven’t disintegrated yet.
So far, American lunar missions have been the only manned flights to land on a celestial body.
In a 1961 speech to Congress, President John F. Kennedy set a national goal to “land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth” by the end of the 1960s.
