What happened to the American flags on the moon?

(CBS News) 

As a symbol of the Fourth of July holiday, it is easy for the conversation this time of year to turn to iconic American flags, like the flag the Marines raised at Iwo Jima; the one firefighters put up at ground zero; and the one that flew over Fort McHenry and was the inspiration for what would become our national anthem.

As the space shuttle program comes to an end this week, CBS News decided to look into the flags the astronauts left behind on six trips to the moon. What's become of them?

CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted the first flag on the moon, it was an act of pure symbolism. A U.N. treaty would not allow the U.S. or any other country to claim the moon as its territory.

Smithsonian curator Allan Needell says the flags planted by the crews of all the Apollo missions that landed on the moon were goodwill gestures to the world.

"By and large, the symbol was very much understood for what it was, as a symbol of pride, but also a symbol of humanitarian accomplishment," Needell says.

As Tom Moser knows, it was also a politically sensitive symbol. An engineer on the NASA team that designed the first flag to go to the moon, Moser was told to keep it hush-hush.

"It was not a military, Department of Defense secret. It was just the fact that politically we didn't want the word out before the event happened," Moser says.

From the beginning, there were technical problems. The Apollo 11 astronauts had difficulty getting the pole deep enough into the lunar soil. And they had trouble extending the full apparatus, designed to keep the flag upright and outstretched in a place where there is never any wind.

Things did not turn out perfectly on the moon, as the flag ended up being bunched up a bit anyway, curator Needell says.

However, the minor malfunction made for an even better effect, the sense that old glory was waving in the breeze.

The flags waving behind are now among the most defining images of our time. But what happened to them is a question University of California Santa Barbara librarian Annie Platoff has been trying to answer.

Her research can account for four of the flags, including the one planted by the Apollo 17 mission. She believes the first two from Apollo 11 and 12 did not survive the ignition gases of the lunar liftoff.

"It wasn't the intention for the flag material itself to last. It was just to be there during the, the event - the landing and departing from the moon. We didn't have a requirement that the flag, the U.S. flag, had to withstand all the environments for eons," Platoff says.

Made from nylon just like the ones at a dime store, though ordered off the shelf from a government supply catalogue, Annie Platoff's theory is they are probably darkened and maybe more than a bit tattered.

"I would guess, over time, 40 years, the combination of sun-rot and micro-meteor impact is probably devastating. I mean it's not a pretty picture to paint. The only way you're going to test these theories is to go back to the Moon and look at the flag," Platoff says.

Chances are, with so much of the space program coming to an end, it is not likely that American astronauts will be the ones to discover whether, after the rocket's red glare, our flag is still there.

[Savy101]

Wow have u ever thought about appolo maybe its true

[lunarguy2]

Examining the LRO images, it is possible to see that the Apollo flags at the Apollo 12, 16 and 17 sites are still suspended by their flag poles. This is shown dramatically by observing images with the Sun low on the horizon and seeing the cast shadows of the roughly 3 by 5 foot flags.
http://interestingnasadiscoveries.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/apollo-12-flag-still-flying/
http://interestingnasadiscoveries.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/apollo-16-flag-still-flying/
http://interestingnasadiscoveries.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/apollo-17-flag-still-flying/

[fortuenti]

Can't they point the Hubble or spy telescopes that way for a peep?

[jovijiovanni]

sonofww2 based on your comments it seems to me that you were out there in the moon for the past ten years. You are blamming the current administration for the economy? I believe you need to go back to the moon.
My opinion is that the space program was a waste of money, nothing have been accomplished from all these space walks, who cares if there is other planets that can sustain life form, live down here to the max and take care of this planet.

[hermest177]

The ongoing assault on U.S. jobs and American labor & wage standards via the continual acts and sponsorship of outsourcing, off shoring and insourcing, perpetrated by the criminal executive class of a fascist, corporate police state and their complicit, bought-off policy-makers is fastly becoming a very real and profound threat to the national security of the United States of America.

A combination of a multi-decade campaign for absolute maximization of corporate profits under the guise of "responsibility to share holders," though more accurately characterized by the mega-million-dollar executive bonuses and corporate cash hoarding we've witnessed, aided by an unconstrained corporate welfare environment bestowed upon the nation by the corporate-puppet-legislative and executive bodies has profoundly devastated and undermined the economic stability of the United States as well as her citizenry thereby compromising, perhaps obliterating the financial well-being and very futures of the families and children of all common Americans in a way that no war or other event throughout history has. If this is not a wholly-precise definition of a national security threat, then one is supremely challenged in defining what exactly would be.

Due to the long term, multi-generational impact that this national security threat has had and will continue to have on the lives of every American and their families over the coming decades, these un-American and subversive activities should be clearly identified and characterized as treasonous and the corporate culprits and policy makers punished accordingly. These "people" whom Americans have entrusted with absolute power over the national economic and legislative processes have failed outright. They have intentionally destroyed the lives and futures of millions of Americans and they've done so with utter arrogance and disregard. They are completely and morally corrupt. Without allegiance to country or countrymen. They are the diametric opposites of what our corporate and government leaders are intended to represent. They have sold America and her citizenry out to the degree that the country is now just a shell of it's former greatness.

Immediate accountability is of the utmost importance. These corporate executives, interlocking directorates and their collaborating factions of policy-makers and subversive-secret-society associates (Bilderberg Group, CFR, etc) should be identified, publicly ostracized, pursued by the U.S. military and executive branches, criminaly charged with treason against country and costitution and prosecuted to the highest degree under law.

In a sane world, this is exactly what would be unfolding... however, in our twisted society, completey bought and sold by elitist international bankers and corporate masters, we as a society are doing the polar opposite of what is right and just. Allowing these scum of the earth to go on raping and pillaging America and her families!

However, one must ask, will they themselves or their legacy ever pay for the economic terror they've waged against Americans? Will they ever be reduced to subsisting in the third-world environment that they are condemning common American families to while in pursuit of their fascist agenda of global economic conquest and democratization on the backs of U.S. tax payers and the blood of American service-men & women?

I believe this is the foremost question on the minds of all conscientious and patriotic Americans.

[rlbond86]

Hey conspiracy theorists: there's easy proof that we got to the moon -- they installed a reflector array on the moon's surface. Scientists all over the world bounce lasers off the moon's reflector array daily to measure its distance.

[PR_in_Alabama]

What happened to the American flags on the moon?


There was never one!!

[radioman390]

Sorry, but you're wrong!
One was sold on EBay last year, for $ 99.95, and the other was taken by Chinese astronauts. Copies of that one will soon be flooding our 99-cent stores.

[baronis]

How symbolic! The American flags rotting on the moon while the Obama administration cancels out our space program. Meanwhile the leadership in the White house and Congress have brought this country to near economic collapse and there is talk circulating that suggests that the US may become the next Grecian tragedy. It appears that John Kennedy's "New Frontier" has come to a miserable end.

[fortuenti]

Yeah, the USA is on course for self-destruction, sad to say. All our so-called leaders in D.C. are doing is rearranging deck-chars on the Titanic. They don't care because they'll be dead by the time the ship actually goes down.

[AlFranken]

I think we should tell the U.N. to stick it and plant military stations on the moon in case we need to go to war in space.

Our number 1 priority should be to declare the outer hemisphere ours and shoot first and ask questions later. Anyone who wants to go into our hemisphere has to get permission from us first and pay a fee.

[williamjd2011]

Sadly, we will never know what happened to our flags. With the Republicans demanding all the cuts that put an end to the space program our once great country must now ask Russia if they happened to see our flags on their last mission. They might let us know what happened to them. But then again we might have to say pretty please.

[sonofWW2]

This comment is amazing. The Republicans have not made one cut, regardless of what they propose, and NASA is already on its way out. Take two years of Democrat one party rule- They squandered our financial future and our grand children are going to be taxed to pay for what happened last year and the year before... and you blame the destruction of NASA on the Republicans? Something is wrong with the way you think.