Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Christian Sager here, did you know that over a hundred
Speaker 1: items have been left behind on the surface of the Moon.
Speaker 1: We're talking about spacecraft, moon boots, cameras, flags, and even
Speaker 1: ninety six bags of urine, feces and vomit. That's right, everybody,
Speaker 1: astronauts dumped their porta potties on the Moon. Are you
Speaker 1: thinking what I'm thinking? We could fly to the Moon
Speaker 1: and steal all that stuff, but we better hurry because
Speaker 1: several states have lobbied to make lunar landing sites into
Speaker 1: national monuments, and while we'd get arrested before we execute
Speaker 1: this great moonheist. Though, we'll need to locate where the
Speaker 1: astronauts left the loot. But wait a minute, can we
Speaker 1: even see what they left there? It turns out no,
Speaker 1: not yet see The resolving power of even our best
Speaker 1: telescopes is too low give in our distance from the Moon.
Speaker 1: The best available today is the Hubble space telescope. From
Speaker 1: its location in Earth's lower orbit. The Hubble only has
Speaker 1: about a one and fifty meter resolution when pointed at
Speaker 1: the Moon. So, for example, something really big like a
Speaker 1: football stadium would only occupy two pixels in an image
Speaker 1: that the hubble could generate, we definitely wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to see lunar rovers or landing bases, much less those
Speaker 1: precious bags of Armstrong's poop. Probably the only thing we
Speaker 1: can currently see on the Moon is a laser beam
Speaker 1: reflector left there in nineteen sixty nine to measure the
Speaker 1: distance back to Earth. However, there are several telescopes currently
Speaker 1: in production that, once finished, will enhance the visibility of
Speaker 1: the Moon's surface significantly. For instance, the Giant Magellan telescope
Speaker 1: in northern Chile should be working by the year and
Speaker 1: it's planned to have ten times the resolving power of
Speaker 1: the hubble, giving it close to a fifteen meter resolution.
Speaker 1: The lunar lander base is close to ten meters long,
Speaker 1: so you could see it, but barely. But why settle
Speaker 1: for squinting when the superior James Web Space telescope is
Speaker 1: shooting for a launch date in the web will have
Speaker 1: eighteen hexagonal reflectors to collect light with, making it seven
Speaker 1: times the size of the hubble and a hundred times
Speaker 1: more powerful. That will give it a one point five
Speaker 1: meter resolution, more than enough to locate landers, rovers and
Speaker 1: hopefully bags and bags of extrement. How much do you
Speaker 1: think we can get for those? On eBay? And check
Speaker 1: out the brain stuff channel on YouTube. And for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com