1972 lunar walk 'magnificent'

LOGAN — For his first half-hour walking on the surface of the moon, Harrison Schmitt did not have the feeling he was far from home. He had trained on Earth working near a lunar lander and was near one then, so the experience seemed about the same.

"It wasn't until I had moved away in order to take a set of three panoramic views of the landing site that I was able to actually see where we were," he said.

Then he really took in the moonscape where he and fellow astronaut Eugene A. Cernan had landed. He saw "this really deep, magnificent valley, a brilliant sun," he said.

"Probably the hardest thing to get used to was the black sky. We're used to having a brilliant sun here on Earth with blue sky. . . .

"But on the moon it's black, it's absolutely black. And then of course you don't have to look very far to see your home, the Earth. It's always in one place."

Earth stands in the same spot above the lunar surface because the moon is gravitationally locked to the planet. It keeps the same side toward Earth at all times.

Schmitt enthralled USU audiences last week, showing still photos and videos, including views taken during excursions on a lunar rover vehicle. Among the audience was Utah's Jake Garn, who shares a distinction with Schmitt of being a former astronaut and a former U.S. senator.

Schmitt noted that he is not in agreement with the vast majority of lunar scientists about the formation of the moon.

Most believe the moon was formed when a giant asteroid slammed into Earth and the resulting fragments coalesced together.

But Schmitt thinks soil samples from the moon disprove the collision scenario. Formed deep inside the moon and brought to the surface by past cataclysms, they were collected by astronauts of the Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 landers.

According to Schmitt, the green glass material found by Apollo 15 and the orange soil found by Apollo 17 would have had different chemical signatures if they had melted in a giant collision.

"If that did happen you would expect the entire moon to have melted at one time, and a great deal of volatilization would have occurred."

An alternative theory is that the moon formed as a small planet that was captured by Earth's gravity.

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