Can you see the flag on the Moon from Earth? Manual of the World responds

The Apollo program, a series of NASA missions in the 60s and 70s that took man to the Moon, had a striking feature: the astronauts who landed on our natural satellite left a United States flag planted.

Are those flags still there? And if they did, would it be possible to see it from here on Earth, using a powerful telescope? This was one of the questions received by Iberê Thenório, from Manual do Mundo, which he answers in the video above.

Not even with a powerful telescope

The first flag, placed in 1969, was hit by the jets of the module that took the astronauts back to Earth, which probably damaged it. It was Buzz Aldrin himself, the lunar module pilot of the Apollo 11 mission, who told this story.

But there were five more Apollo missions that landed on the Moon, and each one placed a flag there. Telescopes on Earth, even the most powerful, are not capable of finding these objects. This is because the flag is very small and the distance from the Moon is very large – around 300 thousand km.

According to the website Telescopesplus.com, you would need a telescope around 200 meters in diameter to see such a small object. The largest telescopes on Earth are between 10 and 40 meters.

However, NASA launched a probe in 2009 that orbits the Moon and managed to take photos of the remains of the missions. You can see the flags on them – but they are just small dots in the image.

What was the flag like?

The flag was made of nylon and had a structure to hold the fabric taut and appear well in the photo. It is necessary to remember that the context of lunar exploration was the Cold War, a military competition between the former Soviet Union and the United States. That’s why it was so important for Americans to plant their flag on the Moon – and take a beautiful photo of it.