The Moon is a Rockin', Rocky Place

The round, hard, heavy iron rock didn't appear special at first but fifth-graders soon changed their minds.

"It's hard to believe, but a long, long time ago, this was out in space," said David Mestre, director of Space Science Education at the Discovery Museum.

He told the astonished students that in the 1990s, a meteorite crashed in a United States backyard and the two boys who found were offered $2,000. They refused and still have it today. Another meteorite crashed through a woman's roof, bounced off her radio and hit her on the hip. She was bruised but otherwise uninjured.

And, he recalled one fatality — but added it was non-human. "A rock from space killed a dog," he said.

Most meteorites are small by the time they reach the Earth's surface but are traveling fast enough to punch through ceilings, Mestre said.

But it was the moon rock samples that turned out to be 4.3 billion years old that really wowed the students.

"These things are very, very complicated and have lots of different chemicals inisde that we didn't expect," he added. For example, lunar soil contains microscopic bits of glass, making it hazardous to breathe and harmful to equipment.

That was one of many challenges the first moonwalkers faced. They were "lucky" to have come back alive based on what scientists know now, Mestre said.

In addition to having to invent the technology (the spacesuit was made in Hartford) to get to the moon, travel on it, and get back to earth, astronauts had to contend with the threat of solar flares and impacts and the then-unknown problem with lunar soil.

The moon does not recycle its surface like the earth does, so its many craters show its long history as a punching bag, according to Mestre. Also, the moon's temperature fluctuates between 250 degrees in the light and -250 degrees in the dark.

He wondered if the first moonwalkers would have gone knowing the threats now.

Another challenge they faced was getting the astronauts properly trained. They tried to train fighter pilots (the original astronauts) to be geologists but then later successfully trained geologists to be astronauts.

Geologists will be key to future exploration because they can analyze what extraterrestrial rocks contain and figure out how to use them in efforts to colonize space, the director added.

He encouraged the students to study geology, engineering and outer space.

"We have not solved the problem [of lunar soil]. Maybe you can," he said.

Floria N. Mallozzi, Science Program leader for grades kindergarten through fifth, said his talk was part of the students' science curriculum. It was much better than a lecture, she added.

"This is fantastic. The kids just eat it up," she said.