Fifty years ago on July 20, millions of Americans and people around the world gathered by their TV sets to witness Neil Armstrong becoming the first human to walk on the surface of the Moon.

In celebration of the anniversary of that historic moment and the Apollo 11 mission, �ֲ���ý News reached out to Moon expert . Petro, whose research focuses on the evolution of the lunar crust, is the deputy project scientist for NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.

Petro shared six pieces of information we’ve learned about our closest celestial neighbor since that fateful July day in 1969 — as well as one big lunar mystery we have yet to figure out.

1. The Moon is much older than we thought.

Pre-Apollo, scientists had proposed a variety of ages for the moon, from the hundreds of millions of years into the billions. The Apollo missions helped narrow the range.

“Apollo 11 samples were about 3 billion years old,” Petro says. “Later missions brought back rocks on the order of 4.55 billion years old, reflecting the age of the crust of the Moon.”

2. The moon’s famous craters come from asteroid impacts.

For decades before the 1969 landing, scientists debated what created the Moon’s many craters. Was it asteroids pounding the surface, or volcanic activity below?

Samples from the Apollo missions proved the former. The Moon doesn’t necessarily attract more asteroids than Earth, but because the Moon doesn’t have much of an atmosphere or processes like erosion, impacts leave conspicuous marks.

And Earth and the Moon have a similar history with asteroids.

“The Moon has pristine crater examples that help us interpret how those huge events shape and reshape planetary surfaces,” Petro says. “We know that early in Earth’s history, large impacts occurred with some frequency, based on the record we see on the Moon.”

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) simulated what Neil Armstrong saw in those final minutes as he guided the Lunar Module to the surface of the Moon. (NASA)

3. The Moon is seismically active.

”Apollo brought seismometers to the surface, allowing us to measure the activity of the Moon,” Petro says. “Apollo 11’s seismometer showed that impacts and moonquakes could actually shake the Moon.”

4. The Moon tells us about other planets.

Without plate tectonics, an atmosphere, and recent volcanoes to move things around, the crust of the Moon is much better preserved than that of Earth and some other planets. Studying the Moon’s essentially unaltered surface has helped scientists understand the rest of the solar system.

”When we look at the surface of a planet or asteroid or comet, we want to know how old it is,” Petro says. “Because we have samples from the Moon, and we know how old various surfaces of the Moon are, we can extrapolate that to other objects based on how many craters are on that surface, to estimate their ages.”

On the day of the 2017 solar eclipse, Noah Petro ’01 represented NASA at a minor league baseball game, the first that he knows of that included an “eclipse break.” (Photograph courtesy NASA/W. Hrybyk)

5. Pilots make good geologists.

The early astronauts, including the Moon-landers, were recruited from the ranks of military test pilots.

“We discovered former fighter pilots could be good field geologists,” Petro says. “All Apollo astronauts received geology training, which helped them collect an amazing suite of samples while on the surface.”

6. There is water in the Moon.

“Samples of volcanic glass were found in 2009 to have a small amount of water in them, changing our view of the Moon from a dry body to one that may have had water in it when it formed,” Petro says.

7. …but we still don’t know how the Moon formed.

“We think a large object struck the Earth early in its history, causing debris to circle the Earth that came together to form the Moon,” Petro says. But scientists don’t have definitive proof.

“We are now observing the formation of planets in other solar systems and using what we know of the Moon to understand how those planets may evolve.”

Officially a lunatic? Check out more of Petro’s work with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and its stunning images of later Apollo missions:

�ֲ���ý professor tells story of Malaga Island, including its dark chapter of forced exodus — Portland Press Herald

The Portland Press Herald covered an unusual gathering on Malaga Island, off the coast of Maine, envisioned and organized by �ֲ���ý professor Myron Beasley.

The event to create a memorial to a dark chapter in Maine history: the forced eviction of an interracial community from Malaga in July 1912.

Beasley, a professor of American studies, invited 47 participants — one for each evicted Malaga resident — to the island for the “performative dinner in the form of memorial,” prepared from ingredients and recipes the Malaga residents might have used.

With stunning art direction by Michael Reidy, managing director of theater and dance, the public installation told the story of Malaga and its people, who were evicted by the state for reasons related to racism and eugenics.

During the performative dinner, each guest "was charged with calling out a name of a former islander as the dinner was served, standing in for the people of Malaga. It was a memorial and a celebration of not forgetting," wrote Portland Press Herald reporter Mary Pols. (Jop Blom)

Reidy based the cutout representations on archival photographs of the islanders. (Jop Blom)

Held on Malaga Island off the Maine coast on July 12, the performative dinner "re:past" was created by Myron Beasley, professor of African American and American cultural studies. (Jop Blom)

During a performative dinner, “the food becomes both the object and subject, to make known the cultural politics surrounding the object — in this case, the food,” says Myron Beasley professor of African American and American cultural studies. (Jop Blom)

Forty seven participants — one for each evicted Malaga resident — attended the performative dinner. (Jop Blom)

During the meal, each guest “was charged with calling out a name of a former islander as the dinner was served, standing in for the people of Malaga. It was a memorial and a celebration of not forgetting,” wrote reporter Mary Pols.

Reidy, whose production team included recent �ֲ���ý grad Saleha Belgaumi ’18 and others, created physical representations of the structures Malaga residents used and of the residents themselves.

The meal was the culmination of years of learning and preparation by Beasley, who first heard the story of this dark chapter in Maine’s history on the day he moved to the state.  “This is a moment that I could finally really do something with it,” Beasley tells Pols.

In producing the event, Beasley worked in cooperation with the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, the conservation group that owns the island.

Beasley’s performative meals have included one at nearby Nezinscot Farm, in 2014, and in 2008, in the �ֲ���ý Mill Complex, as a memorial to mill workers, in which students interviewed local citizens to gather stories, histories, and recipes to learn about hunger, poverty, and food insecurity in Androscoggin County.

The public installations are akin to performance art. Rather than the artist as focus, it is “the food [that] becomes both the object and subject,” Beasley explains, “to make known cultural politics.”

In New Hampshire, the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist pulls into a long-forgotten station — The National

In an Amtrak’s onboard magazine, Elizabeth Strout ’77 recalls the wave of nostalgia as the train she was riding, the Downeaster, pulled into the station in Durham, N.H., her childhood home and where her father taught biology in Nesmith Hall at the University of New Hampshire, visible from the station.

That summer feeling of sitting on the lawn of Nesmith Hall is what assaulted me the most that first day I sat on the train, now so many years later, and saw it from this point of view. I had been so happy on that lawn! Turning cartwheels and lying in the grass, I had felt safe, waiting for my father to be done in his office, to call to me through the window, and then I would run inside and sit in his swivel chair and chatter to him while he strolled about gathering his things to take home. It was a happiness that I would not have remembered had I not seen it from the train.

Elizabeth Strout ’77 speaks during a Q&A with President Clayton Spencer at Reunion in 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

With comedy, movement, and music, ‘The Lectern’ explores all the rules that govern us — MaineToday

Bob Keyes of MaineToday “The Lectern: rule by rule by rule,” which was performed in July at the . The piece, created by Sara Juli and Claire Porter, “takes viewers on a funny spin around the rules and laws that govern our every existence and also what happens when we choose to bend them,” Keyes writes.

The piece took the form of a series of vignettes about rules surrounding “graduation ceremonies, eulogies and sporting events,” as well as “rules about tattoos, rules about fashion, rules about eating at the table.”

“Rules are everywhere,” Juli told Keyes. “Pay attention. Be careful. Some rules should not be negotiated, like stopping at red lights. And there are a whole bunch of rules coming our way that we need to take a look at. Claire and I both use comedy as a way to look underneath some things.”

Pediatrician’s legacy lives on at Mercy — Portland Press Herald

In an for the Portland Press Herald, Dr. Robert McAfee ’56 P’83 recalled one of his role models, a Portland pediatrician who kept an office at the bottom of Munjoy Hill from the early 1920s until his death in 1963.

Dr. Harry Davis showed deep dedication to the community by looking after its health, wrote McAfee, a vascular surgeon and former president of the American Medical Association.

“During the Depression, he spent his own money to ensure that every child in Portland was vaccinated, a practice he continued long after the economy rebounded. He served as the Portland city physician as well as the team doctor to many high school sports teams.”

McAfee wrote his essay as Portland’s Mercy Hospital, where Davis practiced, celebrates the centennial of its founding.

As president of the AMA, McAfee successfully led efforts to frame domestic violence as a medical issue. He received an honorary degree from �ֲ���ý in 1995.

What Can Lunar Eclipses Do For Science? — Sky & Telescope

Ahead of a July 27 lunar eclipse, Graham Jones of the magazine Sky & Telescope , the project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, about what we can learn from lunar eclipses.

Noah Petro ’01 represented NASA at a minor league baseball game that took place during the solar eclipse in August 2017. This July, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the spacecraft for which he is a project scientist, collected data during a lunar eclipse. (Photograph by W. Hrybyk / NASA)

The LRO has had a spacecraft orbiting the Moon for nearly nine years. During the eclipse but before it reaches totality, on-board instruments can measure temperatures, helping scientists “infer the properties of the regolith of the Moon — the surface of the Moon — based on how quickly or slowly it cools,” Petro said.

Why the Moon at all? “The Moon itself records the processes that have affected the entire solar system: impact craters, volcanism, tectonism, interactions with the space environment,” Petro said. “They’re all recorded on the lunar surface.”

This map of the U.S. East Coast shows when and where the launch will be visible of a cargo spacecraft that’s delivering a �ֲ���ý physics experiment from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility to the International Space Station. The launch is at 4:39 a.m. May 21. (Courtesy Orbital ATK)

+How to Watch �ֲ���ý Rocket to Space

Scientist Noah Petro ’01 represented NASA at a minor league baseball game in Oregon last August that had an “eclipse delay” because of the total eclipse of the sun. (Photograph courtesy NASA/W. Hrybyk)

“This is not about putting �ֲ���ý on the map of science teaching and research. It puts yet another �ֲ���ý pin in the map.”

1. Once it’s plugged in, the Cold Atom Lab will be the coldest known environment in the universe.

2. The lab will operate only when the astronauts are asleep.

3. Cold Atom Lab experiments take turns.

Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad’s research rockets to the International Space Station on Sunday morning at 5:04 a.m. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

4. Lundblad will study a form of matter that can’t exist on Earth.

5. When gravity goes away, other forces come to the fore.

6. Lundblad will work remotely.

7. �ֲ���ý students will be involved.

West to east, from Keizer, Ore., to Manning, S.C., �ֲ���ý alumni in the path of Monday’s total eclipse talk about their plans, what’s afoot in their towns, and what has surprised them about the run-up to the big day.

Noah Petro ’01 — Keizer, Ore. — 10:17:26 a.m. PDT

When the eclipse begins its totality in Keizer, Ore., NASA scientist and baseball fan Noah Petro ’01 will begin his moment in the sun.

A deputy project scientist for NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Petro will represent NASA at a minor league baseball game that will have the first eclipse delay in professional baseball history.

Of the four minor-league games in the path of the total eclipse on Monday, the game between the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes and the Hillsboro Hops is first: Gametime is 9:35 a.m. PDT.

Petro, accompanied by his wife, Jennifer Giblin ’01, and two young children, will join a team of NASA scientists and outreach specialists at the game, and they’ll speak about the science behind the eclipse and how to safely view it.

A deputy project scientist for NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Noah Petro ’01 will represent NASA at a minor league baseball game in Oregon, the first to experience an eclipse delay. (Photograph by W. Hrybyk / NASA)

The game will stop after the first inning for the eclipse. The delay will last about 30 minutes to give everyone time to get ready for totality. The moments of darkest shadow will last about 2 minutes.

“Having never seen a total eclipse, I’ll just try to soak it all in,” says Petro, who lives in Alexandria Va., and works at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Still, he’ll been looking carefully. “I’ll keep my eye peeled for Venus which should be visible (as well as a few other planets), I’ll look for structure in the corona which is only visible during totality.”

Petro says that the eclipse delay will be the first in the history of professional baseball, and perhaps professional sports. (In February 1980, a cricket match in India was postponed a day to avoid playing during a partial eclipse.)

“Gene Clough would be proud,” Petro says, referencing beloved �ֲ���ý physics and geology faculty member, now retired.

“People should take eye safety very seriously, regardless where they are,” he advises. “NASA has a series of . Folks should take the opportunity to look at the eclipse (safely), no matter where they are.”

The NASA mission I work on, LRO, has “created the highest-resolution topographic map of any planet in the solar system,” he says. That means that NASA will be able to create “ the most accurate map of the shape of the eclipse — the shadow of the moon — ever.”

Chris Parrish ’93 and Deborah Kurnik ’93 — Corvallis, Ore. — 10:16:56 a.m. PDT

About 40 miles south of Petro’s baseball game, Chris Parrish ’93 and Deborah Kurnik ’93 are letting their 12-year-old daughter, Katherine, take the lead.

“She’s very excited about the eclipse,” Parrish says. Katherine has a treat planned: “Celebratory moon pies,” says Kurnik.

Forty miles south of Noah Petro ’01, in Corvalis, Ore., Christopher Parrish ’93 and Deborah Kurnick ’93 have moon pies ready for Monday.

“We’ll watch the eclipse from our own backyard,” says Parrish, an associate professor of geomatics in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University.

Like other colleges and universities in the path of totality, Oregon State is using the event to shine light on their contributions to science and education. Oregon State’s program is called the

“We will be volunteering to help out at kids’ activity stations on both Saturday and Sunday,” says Kurnik, who is a grant writer in the College of Engineering.

Barbara McIntosh ’59 — Idaho Falls, Idaho — 11:33:04 a.m. MDT

Eight hundred miles to the east in Idaho Falls, Idaho, retired special education teacher Barbara McIntosh is marveling at the crowds — 500,000 predicted to descend on her city, population 60,000.

“No rooms are available,” she says, “We are being told to have gas, food, and water on hand.”

Public officials are warning that the “usual four-hour drive from Salt Lake City to Idahol Falls could take eight hours.”

As for plans, she and her husband, Kenison, will watch from their back yard or a park across the street.

Carrie Noel Richer ’01 — Jackson, Wyo. — 11:34:56 a.m. MDT

Eighty-eight miles to the east in Jackson, Wyo., Carrie Noel Richer ’01 works at the Center for the Arts in Jackson, where she’s coordinating , a large-scale exhibition comprising 10 installations that use the eclipse “as a great lens to think about all that the eclipse brings to mind, while also commenting on the meaning and ideals of ‘the West.’”

As for Richer’s personal plans, her parents and a friends are in town for the event. “We are going to disappear into the Greys National Forest to a secret spot,” she says.

She’s eager to witness a distinctive eclipse phenomena. “Go to a tree and look in the shade of the tree’s shadow. You will see hundreds of crescent images of the partially covered sun all over the ground. Too cool!”

Featured in the exhibition Observatories, the sculpture “Hollow Earth” is made from glass and wood that creates the illusion of a tunnel descending deep into the Earth, housed in an abandoned shed. (Photograph courtesy of the Center for the Arts)

Jason Hall ’97 — St. Louis (just outside totality) — 1:18:00 CDT

Jason Hall ’97 has been a civic and business leader in St. Louis since 2005 when he teamed up with fellow lawyers to start Lawyers for Equality, the first gay lawyers’ association in the region.

Today, he’s co-founder and managing director of a start-up civic initiative, the Arch to Park Collaborative, in St. Louis.

Jason Hall ’97 will be able to step outside his office and experience the eclipse.

“I feel pretty lucky that I’ll be walking outside of my office and taking the moment in so easily,” he says. “I am surprised at how Monday is turning into the equivalent of a national holiday around here!”

Just outside totality, he’ll be at casual watch party that’s being hosted “in our urban innovation district in St. Louis, the Cortex Innovation Community,” he says.

“So, I’ll be surrounded by many other entrepreneurs and innovators enjoying the historic moment.”

Sandra Shea ’75 — Carbondale, Ill. — 1:20:05 p.m. CDT

About 130 miles to the southeast of Jason Hall, Sandra Shea ’75 is near ground zero for the eclipse. There, the totality will be its longest: 2 minutes and 37 seconds.

In the southern part of Illinois, Carbondale, where Sandra Shea ’75 lives and works, is considered ground zero for the eclipse.

She works at Southern Illinois University. Along with around 15,000 others, she’ll be at SIU’s Saluki Stadium with NASA scientists and astronomers from Chicago’s Adler Planetarium.

“I’ll be with family and friends, including a friend from �ֲ���ý, Jean Seitzer Storrs ’78, and her family.”

She’s completely captivated by the event. “I’m a nerd, I admit it,” she says. “Everything about the eclipse is interesting. I teach psychology and neuroscience at the School of Medicine, so science is everywhere, every day.

“I’ve seen partial eclipses but never a total. And we get to do it again in 2024 when another total eclipse will cross Southern Illinois in almost exactly the same place!”

Carbondale officials expect 70,000 visitors to the town, which has a population of 26,000; state officials predict up to 200,000 to the southern part of the state.

Special events are everywhere, Shea says: an Eclipse Comic Con at the university, craft fairs, and days of concerts in different towns. There’s Shadowfest in Carbondale  and Moonstock in Carterville. At the latter, Ozzy Osbourne will be singing “Bark at the Moon” as the sky goes dark.”

Elizabeth Lemerise ’74 — Bowling Green, Ken. — 1:27:34 p.m. CDT

Two hundred miles to the east, in Bowling Green, Ken., Elizabeth Lemerise ’74 is making the most of her location.

The University Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at Western Kentucky University, she’s going to watch from home, about 10 miles south of campus.

In Bowling Green, Ky., Elizabeth Lemerise ’74 is making the most of her location.

At home, “there’s a longer totality than on campus — 1 minutes, 20 seconds, instead of about 50 seconds.”

Not that she’ll skip the first day of classes at her university. The school has pushed back the start of classes until 4 p.m.

Like others, she’s amazed at the predicted throngs and is heeding the warnings from public-safety officials.

“Kentucky expects half a million people to come for the eclipse. Every hotel room in town is booked for the night before, at ridiculous prices, too. The locals have been advised to get their gas and groceries and to stay home!”

Marty Braman Duckenfield ’67 — 2:37:10 p.m. EDT — Clemson, S.C.

Uh-oh.

“To my horror,” reports Marty Braman Duckenfield, “I discovered that our big family gathering is this coming week on Cape Cod. With so many moving parts, plus a contract signed last summer, I will be in Barnstable, Mass.”

There, about 63 percent of the sun will get covered on Monday. “The skies look clear, it’s a perfect place for viewing, and I’ll be surrounded by those I love,” she says. Though it’s a “major blow,” to miss totality, “I’m trying to look at the bright side.”

Duckenfield is an associate producer for Clemson Broadcast Productions, which “has a full court press to record it all, in the skies and down here on Earth.”

Katherine Bernier ’11 — 2:38:03 p.m. EDT — Greenville, S.C.

How to avoid the eclipse crowds? Kayak into the middle of a lake, says Katherine Bernier ’11.

Katherine Bernier ’11 has a plan to avoid the mobs of eclipsers. She and friends from Richmond, Va., have rented kayaks and will paddle far from the madding crowds on a local lake. “Greenville and Clemson University are supposed to be crazy!”

Bernier is starting her second year of a master’s program for environmental planning at Clemson.

What’s impressed Bernier is “lots of planning. I’m glad that schools are either starting late or allowing students to leave early.” She’s also noticing “a focus on education” about the eclipse. For example, the Greenville Zoo is supposed to be packed for .”

“I guess I can say I’m disappointed how ridiculous the pricing is for plane flights down here, due to the demand.”

Monthe Kofos ’11 — Manning, S.C. — 2:44:02 p.m. EDT

For Monthe Kofos, it’s location, location, location.

He lives a few miles south of Manning, S.C., on Lake Marion. “The exact center of the path passes straight over my house,” he says.

Monthe Kofos ’11 figured why drive when the eclipse is best at home?

He thought of traveling to Charleston to watch the eclipse on the beach. “With all the expected chaos and traffic, I’m concerned about the return trip, normally about an hour.”

In his final year of medical school, Kofos is also an avid photographer. Like millions of others, he’s hoping to take some “some cool pictures of the eclipse over the water — provided it is sunny.”

Like other alumni coast to coast, Kofos is stunned by the buzz. “Never did I guess there would be so much hype surrounding this event,” he says. “It also surprises me how many ‘fake eclipse glasses’ are being sold.”

Still, “the benefit is that it provided a cool opportunity to learn more about a solar eclipse.”