Michael Collins, Texas archeologist

In July of that year, he was on a dig at the Tabun Cave in Israel, south of Haifa. Humans had lived at the site off and on for hundreds of thousands of years.

The director of the dig had a thing against radios and didn’t allow them at the site. He relented on July 21, however, to allow the archeologists to listen to the broadcast of Apollo 11 landing on the moon.

Collins was excavating a crudely made ax with one edge chipped off for cutting as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon’s surface and said, “A small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind.”

It struck him, Collins said, that here in his hands and on the radio was nearly the full spectrum of human technology—an elementary stone tool to a man walking on the moon.

“It’s amazing to me that so much happened in so short a time,” Collins said.

***

Same name, different place

If the name Michael Collins seems familiar in the context of Apollo 11, it should. He was the astronaut who orbited the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on it.

Michael Collins, the archeologist, tells this story:

The Aug. 11, 1969 cover of Newsweek

Apollo 11 was all over the news. One of the mechanics, who was sitting behind Collins, was reading the international edition of Newsweek, which, Collins said, was filled cover-to-cover with stories and photos about the moon mission.

Tapping Collins on the shoulder, the mechanic said, “Excuse me, sir. Have you been on any long trips lately?”

Learn about Collins’s archeological research at Can You Dig It? Archeologist works to overturn long-held theory of when people first came to the Americas.

The moon is covered with a layer of dust. NASA scientists and engineers knew that much.

But there was a hot debate about the depth of the dust.

The thin dusters thought there was a thin layer of dust that would not interfere with the landing of the Apollo lunar landing module. The thick dusters thought the dust was so deep that the lander might sink out of sight.

Not wanting to risk that humankind’s grand achievement of a lunar landing would turn into a disappearing act, NASA did what it had to do: It convened a conference of experts.

One of the experts invited was Glen Evans, a geologist from Texas. His credential what that he had done extensive analysis of the meteor crater near Odessa.

Evans was also an archeologist and a naturalist. He had worked for the Bureau of Economic Geology and had been associate director of the Texas Memorial Museum, both part of The University of Texas at Austin.

While he had a lot of experience in geology, his greatest skill was his keen sense of observation, according to Dr. Michael Collins, a researcher at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory.

Collins has known Evans since Collins was 14 years old. He tells what happened when Evans went to Washington for the NASA conference.

As the conference wore on the thin dusters could not persuade the thick dusters nor could the thick dusters persuade the thin dusters. They were stuck in the mud.

Finally, after all the experts had their say with charts and graphs and slides and such, the floor was opened for questions.

Evans, who had not been invited to make a formal presentation, got up. He asked to see a photo of a moon crater shown by an expert.

When the slide came up on the screen, Evans described what he saw.

The crater had a classic upfold lip, created when a meteor struck the surface. He noted that a piece of bedrock as big as a boxcar had broken off and rolled into the crater.

From the photo, you could see where the rock broke from the crater, the track of its roll and where it landed. The rock was almost completely visible.

Apparently, there was a collective “aha” throughout the room.

With Evans’s insight, NASA could proceed to build a lunar lander that would land on a stable surface.

Collins said he heard the story third hand. He heard it from Gene Mears, a colleague of Evans. Mears had heard it from Eugene Shoemaker, the noted astrogeologist, who was at the meeting.

He never heard it from Evans, Collins said. He said Evans is not the kind of man who tells a story like that about himself.

Evans did acknowledge the story, however. Collins wrote the introduction for a book Evans wrote, “Wildness at Risk,” and included the moon story in the introduction. Collins read the introduction to Evans, who said that nothing had to be changed.

Peter Shelus was visiting The University of Texas at Austin campus in 1971, attending an astronomy conference. More important, he was looking for a job.

He was completing a post-doc assignment at the Manned Space Center (now Johnson Space Center) in Houston and job prospects weren’t great. NASA was laying off scientists and engineers as the basic Apollo program wound down.

It was a Friday afternoon and Shelus waited for the elevator in the Castilian apartment building. But before the doors opened, Darrell Mulholland from the university approached Shelus and said, “I hear you’re looking for a job.”

Besides a slow elevator, Shelus can also thank Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin for the job he’s had for 38 years.

The retroreflector placed on the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Shelus’s job was to process the information coming from the new Lunar Laser Ranging Station at McDonald Observatory, the source of the laser beam.

Since then, four other retroreflectors have been placed on the Moon. Two by other Apollo missions 14 and 15 and two French-made mirrors carried to the surface by Soviet Union soft landers.

Now, in a matter of bittersweet timing, The University of Texas at Austin’s role in the lunar laser ranging project is ending as the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 is marked.

The National Science Foundation (NSF), which provided support for the project when NASA dropped it more than 15 years ago, has notified Shelus that the $135,000 for the McDonald Laser Ranging System (MLRS) won’t be renewed.

“We’re essentially going out of business by probably the end of the calendar year,” Shelus said.

He understands the NSF decision—for the most part.

“We know what the lunar science is, we know the MRLS is on its last legs,” he acknowledged. The system is 20 years old and has had few upgrades.

What’s more, a brand new station is coming online in New Mexico and a French installation will re-open after shutting down for refurbishing.

Still, Shelus would like to keep his project going for another two years to collect data that overlap across the three laser stations.

“I’ve been here since 1971 so I’ve been here almost the entire 40 years. It’s been a fantastic ride,” he said. “We’ve put good data on the table, we’ve kept the experiment going and there are no regrets.”

The precise measurements of the moons orbit enabled a range of science projects.

One of the biggest science accomplishments was to test the Equivalence Principal, one of the fundamental concepts in which Albert Einstein built the General Theory of Relativity.

Among specific findings, according to NASA, the laser ranging project showed that:

• the moon is spiraling away from Earth at a rate of 3.8 centimeters a year because of the Earth’s ocean tides.

• the moon probably has a liquid core.

• the universal force of gravity is very stable. Newton’s gravitational constant G has changed less than one part in 100-billion since the laser experiments began.

Just because the Moon will no longer be a target, it doesn’t mean that the Laser Ranging Station is shutting down. Shelus and Jerry Wiant, the project’s engineer, and Randy Ricklefs, the software expert, still have work to do. Ken Harned and Anthony Garcia are observers on the laser.

The station is part of a worldwide network of lasers that bounce laser beams off satellites. What’s more, it will be involved with the two moon missions, LCROSS and LRO, launched by NASA in June.