Featured Image Credit: Encyclopaedia Britannica/UIG/HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Humans have spent a grand total of 300 hours on the surface of the moon and we have left some pretty bizarre things up there.
On our visits, humans have left behind all sorts from excrement to gold.
The first successful moon landing took place in 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first and second men to ever step foot on the lunar surface.
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Millions of people watched on TV back down on Earth as Armstrong uttered his now iconic line: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
A total of six Apollo missions landed on the moon over the years, with some lasting up to three days each.
And during that time, the astronauts left a lot of things behind before heading home.
Some things were sentimental and left intentionally while other, less pleasant things, were left behind to make room to bring home some rock samples.
And apparently, there’s quite a lot of nasty stuff on the moon - 96 packets of human excrement, vomit and urine to be exact.
However, that wasn’t all - some valuable items left on the moon include 12 Hasselblad cameras and a gold-plated telescope.
This telescope is the only one to have made observations from the surface of a body outside of the Earth.
It’s not known what state it’ll now be in after spending the last 40 years on the lunar surface, but some experts believe that its gold-plating may have protected it.
However, some other items might not have fared so well.
The six American flags that were all pitched by the different Apollo missions are likely to have all been bleached white by the sun by now.
During the first lunar landing, Aldrin removed some objects from his shoulder pocket and dropped them onto the moon’s surface.
These items included a patch in honor of the Apollo 1 Mission, which was meant to be the first mission in the effort to land a man on the moon but their spacecraft never took off.
Instead, it caught fire during a launch rehearsal and all three members of the crew tragically died.
Aldrin also left behind two memorial medals in honor of Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, who both lost their lives in tragic accidents.
Another object left was a small silicon disk containing good will messages from the leaders of 73 countries around the world.
And finally, the commemorative last thing placed on the moon’s surface was a gold olive branch to symbolize global peace.
