The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Has Sudbury Helped Astronauts Understand the Moon?

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Sudbury, Ont. is reportedly the only Canadian city to be mentioned on the moon. That's because this northern Ontario city helped NASA astronauts unpack some mysteries on the lunar surface. In this episode, we'll learn why Sudbury was so important to two Apollo missions, we'll meet one of the people who helped train the astronauts here and we'll hear why Sudbury's role in training astronauts might not be over. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Before two Apollo missions went to the moon, the astronauts had to first come to northern Ontario. There was an important scientific purpose to bringing them here, and it all has to do with this city's connection to the stars above. Welcome back to Sudbury, Ontario. Ontario's astronaut superstar Chris Hadfield once referred to Sudbury as quote that big smear. He was referring to the way the city looks from above and it's actually a pretty fitting description. About 1.85 billion years ago a meteorite smashed into what's now Sudbury. It created the Sudbury Basin, the third largest known

impact structure in the world. At the same time, it also made Sudbury one of the richest mineral areas on Earth. For a while there was no hard evidence that a meteorite had caused this formation. It was so old that much of it had eroded, but there were a few key features that would ultimately prove the theory. And as strange as it may sound, that whole mystery began to unravel right here behind this very hotel. I'm David Pearson. I was a professor at Laurentian University until just a couple of years ago. And for the first 30 years that I was at Laurentian, I taught geology. Back in May of 1963, a geologist called Bob Dietz came up from the United States

and he looked at the geological map of Sudbury, the Sudbury area, and said, this is a meteorite impact crater. Around those craters there were what are called shatter cones, that is, cone-shaped fractures, a bit like sort of half of an ice cream cone with a point at one end, and they came from the shockwave that caused the crater, the shockwave of an asteroid, a meteorite, hitting the earth. He got a taxi at Sudbury Airport, he came to the Holiday Inn here, and in the headlights of the taxi before it even got out of the car he said, whoa,

those are Characons. That was the first, the very first piece of evidence that Sudbury was the result of a meteorite impact and not a volcanic explosion, which was the current interpretation at the time. After Sudbury became known as a confirmed impact crater, other geological features began to stand out. One of these was breccias, and that's what led NASA to take an interest in this place. What has happened on the Moon is that surface rocks, and rocks probably down to 10 or 15 kilometers deep have in fact been broken by

the shock waves that caused sides of those fractures to rub together and for fragments that came from the sides to be rounded like boulders to make what we call Sudbury Bruture. rounded like boulders to make what we call Sudbury-Bretcher. And that was one of the main reasons that they came to Sudbury, so that they could see and say, this is Bretcher, this is like Sudbury-Bretcher. In 1971, the future crew of Apollo 16 came to Sudbury with a small team from NASA. The following year, the Apollo 17 crew would do the exact same. The moon is well known for having a surface that's covered in all sorts of craters, so by first studying a known impact crater here on Earth, the astronauts might have a better idea of what to expect

on the lunar surface. Inco geologists took the astronauts around the city. They visited some of the best examples of impact crater features in the area. It was quite a sight. The Apollo 16 crews used radios to talk with a sort of mission control. It was meant to help simulate the conditions they would face on the moon. A small team of people from Sudbury supported the training and as it turns out we already met one of the team members. I was with the Apollo 17 crew with Jack Schmidt and Gene Sernan, the last two astronauts to visit the Moon. And I was there partly as a local geologist to add a little bit of information here and there.

The astronauts learned a lot on their field trips to Sudbury, and they didn't forget this place when they got into space. Less than 10 years after the NASA training, Sudbury began its re-greening program. There's dozens of photos of the astronauts on barren rocky hilltops like the one that used to stand behind me before this area became a forest once again. Because of all those changes, it's become really hard to figure out where the photos were originally taken. Lucky for me though, I don't have to do that work. Remembering how exciting it was to be with the Apollo 17 astronauts when they came to

Sudbury, I thought I must find all the photographs that exist, that I can get my hands on, about not only the Apollo 17, but the Apollo 16 crew who came here. And I found those photographs, and I found a spot where I can be absolutely sure that Charlie Duke and John Young stood and began to talk geology.

So let's go and have a look. It is incredible to be able to revisit these same training sites more than 50 years later. Many of them are on private property, but there are a few like here at Onaping High Falls where anybody can retrace the footsteps of the astronauts. These training missions were really interesting on their own, but they also represent a bigger shift,

the transformation of Sudbury into a place of great scientific research. It gave people thoughts about other parts of the landscape, the lakes, the history of the lakes, the impact of industry. It led to many, many threads of science research that probably would not have taken place if we'd just been an ordinary community with an ordinary history. We're not. We're an extraordinary community with an extraordinary history. We previously learned about Sudbury's regreening program, a world-class industry-led project to repair environmental damage. There's also been plenty of innovation here within the mining sector and Sudbury is also

home to a major physics research lab two kilometers underground. Sudbury is well known within the scientific community but its stories like the NASA training that have stayed with the people of the city. My name is Todd Thomas. I live here on Kelly Lake and right now I'm sitting on the rock that the Apollo 16 astronauts sat when they were in Sudbury. Well, I've lived here for over 35 years and it's special to me. I'm a fly boy. I love flying. I love anything that has to do with it and having to be able to sit and I'm sitting on the rock where the Apollo astronauts at I Means luck to me and this rock will not be disturbed We're going to keep it

For as long as I'm living With no development on it because it's a piece of history long as I'm living with no development on it because it's a piece of history. So we have a few old photos, stories of astronauts on the rocks and a bunch of overgrown training sites. Why talk about all this now? After all, the last time a person set foot on the moon was more than half a century ago. Well, Sudbury's role in training astronauts might not be over. Dr. Gordon Lozinski, I'm a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences

here at the University of Western Ontario. For a decade now, I've been teaching an impact cratering field school there every other year in September. And that has had support through NASA's survey. And they would fund a bunch, sometimes up to 15 US students, grad students, post-docs to come up to Sudbury and gain experience for the very same reasons

you just outlined. It's a big crater, learn about cratering processes, go out into the field and see these rocks. When we go to the moon, a big priority, for example, is the South Pole Aitken Basin, figuring out if there was a late heavy bombardment on the moon, age dating in the early part of the solar system, and for that we need to date impacts, and for that we need impact melt, and for that we need astronauts to know

how to recognize it. So therefore, you know, Sudbury makes a really ideal candidate. I'm pushing NASA and the CSA that we should start bringing astronauts back to Sudbury, but it hasn't happened quite yet. The Apollo missions would not have been as successful if it weren't for the training here in Sudbury, and they're a part of why this city is known for scientific excellence to this day. The coming decades are going to bring major growth for space exploration,

and Northern Ontario is already a part of that new era. It might be too early to say what Sudbury's role will be this time around, but whether it's out in space or a little closer to home, this city certainly has a lot more to teach us. For that, it's earned its place in... the universe's living history.