2024-02-11 12:11:03
On the 8th, Nepal’s Pasang Ramu city, which oversees the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest (8,848m) and the second peak, Lhotse Peak (8,516m), said, “The mountain stinks,” and added, “In the future, mountaineers who climb the two peaks must avoid human waste. “You must purchase an envelope at the base camp, and we will confirm the use of this envelope when descending the mountain.” With so many climbers flocking every year, it is said that human waste is overflowing not only outside the base camp at 5,000m above sea level, but also around the second and third camps, which are higher than this.
However, the places where humans leave excrement, leaving traces while moving, do not stop at the highest places on Earth. Even on the surface of the moon, which is an average of 384,400 km away from Earth, human waste and other human-made waste remain.
The last time humans stepped on the moon was in December 1972, when NASA’s Apollo 17 landed. However, even after that, the governments and private companies of Russia, China, India, Israel, and Japan sent unmanned spacecraft and continued to leave trash on the moon, which had not changed at all for 4.5 billion years.
About 10 years ago, in July 2012, NASA counted lunar trash that was spacecraft.[착륙선]It amounts to 500,000 pounds (approximately 226.7 tons) of debris, debris, and various equipment.
NASA’s Apollo program left behind the most waste. A total of 12 American astronauts flew to and from the moon in six Apollo landers, leaving behind 400,000 pounds (about 181.4 tons) of artificial materials on the moon.
On the moon, plastic bags containing the excrement left behind by the 12 astronauts who landed on the moon as part of NASA’s Apollo program have remained in place for over 50 years./NASA
Among these, a very interesting item is 96 plastic bags containing the astronauts’ feces, urine, and vomit. There is no air, atmosphere, or wind on the moon, so what is left behind is still there.
The 96 plastic bags of excrement left behind by 12 astronauts during the six Apollo missions are the most direct trace of humanity’s visit to the moon. The astronauts worked in bags attached to the hips of their spacesuits, and due to the payload weight limit of the liftoff ship, they abandoned the bags containing them on the moon.
Graphics = Chosun Design Lab Yeonju Lee
50% of human waste is water. Additionally, more than 1,000 microbial species live in the human intestines. Therefore, the inside of the plastic bag containing human waste forms an excellent ecosystem where viruses, bacteria, and fungi brought from the earth can live. Astronauts spent two to three days on the lunar surface for each mission.
◇What happened to the microorganisms in human feces?
Therefore, astrobiologists are curious about what happens to various microorganisms, such as bacteria and viruses, from the human body in the harsh environment of the moon.
In fact, the Apollo 16 astronauts, who spent a total of 71 hours on the Moon, placed nine microbial species outside the spacecraft, many of which survived, even though it was only for three days. If the human waste disposal bag is well sealed, the diaper inside may still retain moisture.
Of course, the moon has neither an ozone layer to block ultraviolet rays nor a strong magnetic field to reflect cosmic radiation. In addition, during the day and night periods of the moon, which alternate for 15 days each based on Earth days, the temperature of the moon shows extreme differences from 100°C to -173°. Therefore, the general opinion is that the microorganisms contained in the astronaut’s urine and vomit would have died shortly thereafter.
“With radiation and temperatures of 100°C, microorganisms die within days or weeks,” said Andrew Schuerger, a space life scientist at the University of Florida. “It is unlikely that these microorganisms were alive,” he said.
However, even if microorganisms die, if they leave traces of new adaptations or transformations in extreme environments, their discovery can be of great academic benefit.
◇Why are golf balls, hawk feathers, and aluminum hammers on the moon?
The largest items left behind by American astronauts on the moon are space equipment such as crashed probes, landers, and rovers. In addition to about 70 pieces of spaceflight equipment and five moon rovers, they left behind 12 pairs of astronaut boots, an American flag whose colors had completely faded from powerful ultraviolet rays, camera equipment, a backpack, and a family photo.
Aluminum hammer and falcon feather left on the lunar surface/NASA
David Scott, captain of Apollo 15 (July-August 1971), experimented with simultaneously dropping a 27.2-gram falcon feather and a 1.36-kg aluminum hammer. The two objects fell to the floor at the same time in a vacuum. Galileo’s law, which states that ‘if there is no air resistance, all falling objects have the same motion’, was proven on the moon.
Apollo 14 (January-February 1971) astronaut Alan Shepherd, who was a golf enthusiast, secretly put a 6-iron head and two golf balls into his spacesuit and socks before boarding the spacecraft. These were not among the official purchases of the Apollo program. Shepard became mankind’s first ‘moon golfer’ by swinging an iron head on the handle of a shovel that loosened lunar soil (regolith).
This iron head and golf ball also remained on the moon. This was because the takeoff weight of the spacecraft carrying the moon rock had been calculated in advance down to the smallest detail.
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