50 Years On, Where Are the Surveyor 3 Moon Probe Parts Retrieved by Apollo 12?

Apollo 12 moonwalkers Charles "Pete" Conrad (pictured) and Alan Bean retrieved parts from the Surveyor 3 spacecraft, which was in walking distance of their lunar module, Intrepid.

Fifty years ago, two astronauts became the world's first space archaeologists, of a sort, retrieving parts from a robotic probe that preceded them to the surface of the moon. Half a century later, where have those Surveyor 3 artifacts ended up today?

Apollo 12 crewmates Charles "Pete" Conrad and Alan Bean achieved the first precise lunar touchdown on Nov. 19, 1969, landing within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 spacecraft. On their second of two moonwalks, Conrad and Bean ventured over to the robotic probe, which by then had been on the moon for two and a half years.

"Hey, we got a nice brown Surveyor here ... well, raise the visor and it's not so brown, but it's tan," described Bean as he lifted his helmet's gold-coated visor to get a clear look at the previously white lander.

A short time later, as he and Conrad continued to inspect Surveyor, Bean found it was not tan, or brown, after all.

"We thought this thing had changed color, but I think it's just dust," said Bean. "We rubbed into that battery, and it's good and shiny again."

Following their training and checklists, the astronauts collected a scoop from the probe's soil mechanics-surface sampler, a section of unpainted aluminum tube from a strut supporting the Surveyor's radar altimeter and Doppler velocity sensor, another section of aluminum tube that was coated with inorganic white paint and a segment of television 

cable wrapped in aluminized plastic film.

And there was the Surveyor's camera.

"That's ours!" exclaimed Conrad, as the camera came loose.

"We got her!" replied Bean.

The Apollo 12 moonwalkers returned the camera and other parts to their lunar module, "Intrepid." Later that same day, 31 hours after they arrived, Conrad and Bean lifted off of the moon to rendezvous with their third crewmate, Richard "Dick" Gordon, on the command module "Yankee Clipper" and begin their journey back to Earth. Accompanying them were 75 pounds (34 kilograms) of moon rocks and 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of probe hardware.

Surveying Surveyor

Like the moon rocks, the Surveyor 3 parts were returned to Earth for study. For the first time, scientists and engineers had an opportunity to analyze equipment after it being subjected to long-term exposure on the lunar surface.

"The returned material and photographs have been studied and evaluated by 40 teams of engineering and scientific investigators over a period of more than one year," wrote Surveyor program manager Benjamin Milwitzky in the 1971 report on the studies' findings.

More than 80 researchers carefully examined the returned Surveyor parts for the effects of radiation and lunar dust exposure. As it turned out, Conrad and Bean had been correct — Surveyor 3 did change color and it was partly due to lunar dust adhesion. Sun exposure, over the course of 32 lunar days, had also caused paint to fade.

The engineering studies found that the TV camera and other hardware exhibited no signs of failure, which led Milwitzky to conclude, "that the state of technology, even as it existed [prior to the Surveyor 3 launch in 1966], is capable of producing reliable hardware that makes feasible long-life lunar and planetary installations."

Other studies looked at the probe's equipment for the effects of the solar wind and micrometeorite impacts. About the latter, the research concluded that none of the visible surface features were of meteoritic origin.

Bacteria that was found within the television camera was initially thought to have been deposited before Surveyor 3 was launched to the moon, meaning that it had survived for 31 months on the moon. Later studies found that it was more likely to have been the result of contamination from the team inspecting the camera after it was returned to Earth, as a result of poor clean room procedures.

Surveyor souvenirs

After the studies were complete, NASA placed some of the Surveyor 3 parts into storage, alongside the moon rock and soil samples being preserved by the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (later, Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility) at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Others made their way to museums — and elsewhere.

"NASA treats them as lunar samples, not as artifacts," said Michael Neufeld, a senior curator in the space history department at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. "We have the Surveyor 3 camera on loan."

The television camera is currently in storage, as the gallery where it has been exhibited is being renovated. It is expected to return to display with the opening of the new Exploring the Planets exhibition in 2022.

The Cosmosphere space museum in Hutchinson, Kansas exhibits the scoop from the soil sampler, which is also on loan from NASA. Another piece of the sampler is on display at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

NASA also loaned or gifted Surveyor 3 parts to some of its leaders. Before arriving at the Smithsonian, the Surveyor 3 camera was presented to William Pickering on his retirement as the director of JPL in 1976.

The scoop motor gear box cover from Surveyor 3 was presented to NASA chief scientist John Naugle. Today is at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC.

The sampler scoop's motor gear box cover was placed with an American flag that was flown on Apollo 12 in a clear tube and mounted on a wooden base for presentation to NASA's chief scientist John Naugle for his "many contributions to the nation's scientific efforts in space." After Naugle's death in 2013, his family returned the display to NASA's headquarters in Washington, DC, where it is today.

"When John Naugle's daughter returned the Surveyor 3 memento to us, it had a sticker on the bottom that said something like, 'To be returned to NASA,'" wrote Bill Barry, NASA's chief historian, in an email to collectSPACE.com.

Another piece, the color filter wheel from the television camera, remains in private hands. NASA presented the Surveyor 3 artifact to Edgar Cortright, director of Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, from 1968 to 1975. After he died in 2014, Cortright's son confirmed that NASA considers the filter wheel to be his family's property, but has plans to eventually share it with the public.

"While I do intend to donate it at some point as I think it belongs at the museum, I decided to hold onto it for a while as a memory of my father," said Dave Cortright.

That pieces were loaned or gifted as souvenirs is not unheard of, said Neufeld.

"There is some precedent from human [spaceflight] missions, people would take things out of the spacecraft and turn them into gifts or the astronauts would take things home," he said. "So there has been this tradition of turning these things into awards for people at NASA."

That said, both Barry and Neufeld agree that having the Surveyor 3 parts available today, 50 years after they were returned to Earth, has merit.

"There is much to be learned from Surveyor 3," said Barry. "Studying the Surveyor artifacts currently on Earth again with new techniques could, I presume, bear new information."

"[They are] something that were on the moon that you can look at, something that was recovered from the moon and is in the spectacular pictures from Apollo 12 of the astronauts at Surveyor," said Neufeld. "You can say, 'That thing in this photo is this object that is sitting right in front of you.”

Businessman Buys Hitler's Possessions at Auction so They Can't Be Used for Nazi-Propaganda, Donates Them All to Jewish Group

circa 1936: Adolf Hitler making a speech. A businessman has purchased items including Hitler's top hat at auction to keep them out of the hands of neo-Nazis.

A Lebanese businessman who purchased a number of items belonging to Adolf Hitler at auction plans to hand them over to a Jewish group to stop them ending up in the hands of the far-right.

Abdallah Chatila, who runs a multimillion-dollar diamond business in Geneva, Switzerland, is reported to have spent more than €500,000 (£430,000) on the items at an auction in Munich, Germany.

The lot included a top hat worn by Hitler, as well as a cigar box, typewriter, and a silver-plated copy of his book Mein Kampf, reports Le Matin Dimanche.

GERMANY - DECEMBER 01: Young German Boy Reading Mein Kampf, In 1938 (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

"Far-right populism and anti-Semitism are spreading all over Europe and the world, I did not want these objects to fall into the wrong hands and to be used by people with dishonest intentions", Chatila told the Swiss newspaper.

After purchasing the item, Chatila said he will now be donating them to the Keren Hayesod association, an Israeli fundraising group, with the hope they end up in a museum, after having originally wished they were "burned."

According to Deutsche Welle, Chatila paid around €50,000 (£43,000) for the top hat which was found in Hitler's home in the 1930s, and a further €130,000 (£111,000) on the special edition of Mein Kampf. Chatila said he wanted to purchase more of the items, but was outbid during the auction at Hermann Historica.

Circa 1939: Adolf Hitler with Hitler Youth, boys who are engaging in various camp activities

Rabbi Menachem Margolin, head of the European Jewish Association, criticized the auctioning of the items as it is Germany which "leads Europe in the sheer volume of reported anti-Semitic incidents." Margolin also urged German authorities to place anyone who purchased such items valued by the far-right on a watch list, reports AFP.

In a statement after it was confirmed Hitler's possessions will be donated to the Keren Hayesod, the European Jewish Association said: "You see us calling for action from time to time. Asking you to get involved, to help us change what is wrong and bring light in to our lives.

Hitler receives the salute of the Columns in Adolf Hitler Platz during the Reichs Party Congress in Nuremburg Germany. 

"It's easy to think that one voice will not change anything but this is the best example of how it actually does!

"Thank you Mr. Abdallah Chatila for doing the right and noble thing. Thank you all of you out there that took the time to write, speak and bring the issue to the public. Your thoughts and voices matters."

According to The Local, Chatila is among the top 300 richest people in Switzerland having moved there from his native Lebanon decades ago. He was estimated to have a net worth of around €136 million (£116 million) in 2012.

Last week, Austria's interior ministry announced that Hitler's birthplace in the small Austrian town of Braunau am Inn will be turned into a police station to stop it becoming a shrine for neo-Nazis.

"The house's future usage by the police should set a clear signal that this building will never be a place to commemorate Nazism," the interior minister, Wolfgang Peschorn, said in a statement.

New photos vs old: comparisons show dramatic Swiss glacier retreat

Picture of the Gorner Glacier taken in 1863 is seen displayed in the same location in 2019 in Zermatt 

People walk in the Ice Cave at the Rhone Glacier at the Furka

 THE FURKA PASS, Switzerland (Reuters) - On the hairpin bend of a Swiss mountain pass, a Victorian-era hotel built for tourists to admire the Rhone Glacier has been abandoned now that the ice has retreated nearly 2 km (1.2 miles) uphill.

Camera is pictured in front of the Eiger and Moensch mountains in Wengen

 Where mighty glaciers once spilled into Swiss valleys like frozen rivers of ice, a residue of grey scree and boulders remains, spliced through with raging streams.

The Lac des Dix, a concrete gravity dam collecting water from the glaciers for the production of electricity, is seen in Heremence

 A Reuters montage of images - showing photos of modern-day mountain landscapes next to archive shots of the same scenes decades earlier - reveals the dramatic change

The Rhone Glacier and Belvedere Hotel are seen in the Swiss Alps in Obergoms

 More than 500 Swiss glaciers have already vanished, and the government says 90% of the remaining 1,500 will go by the end of the century if nothing is done to cut emissions.

Water flows down the Trient Glacier on a hot summer day in Trient

 Their retreat is expected to have a major impact on water levels - possibly raising them initially as the ice melts but depleting them long term. Officials fear the changes could trigger rockfalls and other hazards and affect the economy.

The Cabane de Prarochet mountain hut is pictured next to the Tsanfleuron Glacier near Saviese

 The Belvedere Hotel, built in the 1880s during a surge in Alpine tourists, was an early victim of the decline. Once the scene of wild parties, it features in a James Bond car chase in "Goldfinger".

A woman takes a picture of the Ice Cave at the Rhone Glacier at the Furka

 Visitors can still walk into a cave carved into the glacier. But the ice above is now draped with huge white sheets to reflect the sun's heat. Despite such efforts, melt waters have formed a green lake.

People sit above the Aletsch Glacier in the Swiss Alps at the Eggishorn in Fieschertal

 Down the valley, a mid 19th century photograph shows the glacier's bulging snout more than 100 metres thick. Now, animals graze and a river meanders on the same spot.

The Eiger, Guggi and Giesen Glaciers are pictured in Wengen

 In another archive photograph taken in the late 19th century in front of the Aletsch glacier - the largest in the Alps - a man sits on a boulder in front of a huge ice channel that merges with the main ice stream below. Today, they no longer join.

A patch of snow is covered for tourists to use with slides later in the season on the Tsanfleuron Glacier near Les Diablerets

 Landlocked Switzerland is warming at twice the global rate and over the last year its glaciers have lost 2% of volume, said Mathias Huss, who heads Switzerland's glacier monitoring institute GLAMOS which has data stretching back 150 years.

The Aletsch Glacier is pictured from the Eggishorn in the Swiss Alps in Fieschertal

 "We have never seen such a fast rate of glacial decline since the measurements have started," he said.

The Diablerets and Tsanfleuron Glaciers are pictured from Saviese

 Some hope that politics can make a difference, especially after the Greens surged in an October election. The "Glacier Initiative" calling for more climate measures collected more than the 100,000 signatures required to trigger a referendum and will be sent to Bern this week.

The Aletsch Glacier is pictured in the Swiss Alps in Belalp

 But the glaciers will keep shrinking, scientists say. "The Alps will still be beautiful in my opinion, but they will be different," Huss said.

The Trient Glacier is pictured in 1891 in Trient

The Aletsch Glacier is pictured from the Eggishorn between 1860 and 1877 in Fieschertal

The Eiger, Guggi and Giesen Glaciers are pictured near the Jungfrau between 1890 and 1900 in Wengen

Belgium begins to face brutal colonial legacy of Leopold II

Leopold II ruled Congo Free State as a personal fiefdom.

In the last years of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, King Leopold II of Belgium ruled the Congo Free State with a tyranny that was peculiarly brutal even by the cruel and deeply racist standards of European colonialism in Africa. He ran the country – now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo – as a personal fiefdom, looting ivory and rubber and murdering millions before the international community stepped in to demand he bequeath the country to the Belgian state.

Yet debate over his legacy has remained muted in Belgium, where hundreds of roads are named after the king along with memorials dedicated to his memory and glory.

Now, under pressure from a growing movement that believes Belgium needs to confront its past, attitudes in the corridors of power are starting to change. As part of a belated reckoning with its colonial history, museums are showcasing sins that were previously overlooked, the tone of history books in school is shifting and, in a development unthinkable until recently, cities have started to remove street signs commemorating Leopold II and openly denounce his legacy.

Congolese amputees, pictured about 1900. Amputation was frequently used as punishment in the Congo Free State, controlled by Leopold II.

The council of Kortrijk, in west Flanders, has said it is renaming its Leopold II Laan [avenue] on the grounds the monarch was a “mass murderer”. Officials in Dendermonde, a Flemish city 20 miles north of Brussels, said they were changing a similarly named street to simply Leopold Laan to avoid further “shame” for residents.

Elsewhere, a working group in Ghent is considering the city’s role in Belgium’s colonial past and whether it remains appropriate to have a Leopold II Laan. The mayor of Bruges, Dirk de Fauw, said he was assessing the situation. “If other cities start with it, it could trigger a chain reaction, but there are no plans yet,” he told the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper.

While some municipalities are holding out, the reappraisal offers further evidence of a sea change in how the colonial history is viewed.

Those resistant to change are likely to come under more pressure when a Hollywood film, based on a best-selling book 20 years ago that highlighted Leopold’s bloody rule of the Congo Free State, is released. 

Last week it was announced Ben Affleck would be producing and directing the film inspired by Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost.

Earlier this year a UN working group concluded in its preliminary report that, nearly six decades after the newly named DRC gained independence from Belgium, many of the country’s institutions remained racist and the state needed to apologise for the sins of its past as a step towards reform. The then prime minister Charles Michel said the government would respond when the UN filed its final report, although he expressed some surprise at the findings.

Activists say an important step towards acknowledging the past was made last year when Brussels named a square in honour of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the DRC, who was assassinated in 1961 with the connivance of the Belgian government. It had taken 10 years of campaigning by the Congolese diaspora and others for the city authority to give its approval.

Panels giving information about Leopold II have also been attached to most of his statues in recent years.

Jeroen Robbe, of the anti-racism group the Labo vzw said too many municipal leaders were still failing to show moral leadership: “The fact they are taking this so lightly indicates a blind spot that we have in our own history.

Inauguration of a square in Brussels, dedicated to the memory of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, after independence from Belgium.

“Not a priority? Nobody would dare say that about a Stalinstraat or a Hitlerstraat. The difference is not the size of the horror, but the skin colour of the victims. You have to change the street names and add an explanation to it, so that we don’t hide away the past.”

In Kortrijk, the council said it was also renaming a street marking the life of Cyriel Verschaeve, a Flemish nationalist priest, and collaborator during the Nazi occupation of Belgium. Alderman Axel Ronse said: “Leopold II was a mass murderer and Cyriel Verschaeve a collaborator. We will support companies and residents who may be affected by the new street names in the future.”

'Missing' neutron star found hidden in supernova after 32-year search

Shrouded by gas and dust from an exploded star, the neutron star was playing a winning game of hide-and-seek. Cardiff University

When a giant star exploded in a supernova 32 years ago, it should have left behind an incredibly dense collapsed core, known as a neutron star. But the giant blast, dubbed Supernova 1987A, spewed gas and dust into the cosmos like a toddler throwing pasta around its highchair -- it was a messy affair. 

All the extra dust obscured our view of the neutron star, but using sharp new images, astronomers have finally found the zombie star's hideout.

The study, published in the Astrophysical Journal on Nov. 19, used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to examine the thick cloud of dust surrounding Supernova 1987A, which is positioned in the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 168,000 light-years from Earth. Gazing through the dense space smog, astronomers were able to locate a patch of dust they believe harbors the neutron star.

"For the very first time we can tell that there is a neutron star inside this cloud within the supernova remnant," said Phil Cigan, astronomer at Cardiff University and first author on the study, in a press release. "Its light has been veiled by a very thick cloud of dust, blocking the direct light from the neutron star at many wavelengths like fog masking a spotlight."

The 66 telescopes that make up ALMA are located in the Chilean desert and were used in collaboration with the Event Horizon Telescope team to snap the first ever image of a black hole earlier this year. The researchers used the array to observe submillimeter wavelengths of light, which helped pull back the dust curtain on the hidden star.

Supernova 1987A was first spotted in February 1987 and provided one of the best examples of the cosmic phenomena for researchers to probe, eventually revealing a ton of knowledge about the life of giant stars, what happens when they collapse and what the star afterlife looks like.

This still image from video issued by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows Mercury as it passes between Earth and the sun on Nov. 11, 2019. The solar system's smallest, innermost planet appears like a tiny black dot during the transit.

Astronomers have suggested a number of fates for the star at the center of the supernova as a result of the neutron star's hide-and-seek heroics. Other researchers have postulated further collapse may have resulted in a black hole or an unusual type of star known as a "quark star" which is full of exotic particles and weird physics.