What happened to the flags on the moon?

On July 10, 1969, Apollo 11 touched down on the moon. With that, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin accomplished “one giant leap for mankind”. Their work done, before turning back to earth, the two astronauts planted a three ft by five ft nylon American flag mounted on a pole into the ground. As the spaceship shot away from the moon, Aldrin said he saw the f lag get knocked over by the rocket blast.

It seemed there was little chance the flag would survive in the harsh lunar environment. With the abrasive moon dust and the sun’s unfiltered UVrays, the flag most likely would quickly disintegrate. In fact, the f lag was never intended to last long.

It was purchased from the New Jersey-based flag company Annin for five dollars and fifty cents ($35 today, approximately Rs 2,100). The f lag was made with nylon, not intended to survive moon-conditions. Five other, less talked about, localstore flags got planted on the moon during Apollo missions 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17. This brings us to 2012. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC for short, was first launched in June 2009.

It spent over three years orbiting the moon. In 2012, high-resolution images sent back by LROC, based on shadow movement, confirmed that all — except Apollo 11 and Apollo 15’s flags — are still standing.

Given the other flags seemed to have survived, it appears that Apollo 15 and Apollo 11’s flags are there too, the latter simply lying on the lunar surface. So what about the condition of the flags? The general consensus is that the colours have probably bleached and faded to white.