APOLLO 11 MISSION. 40 Years ago, July 14. University of Maryland flew me to Cape Kennedy to deliver 3-three inch, hand-held argon laser filters to astronauts Mike Collins, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin, so they could spot an argon laser beam (green beam) that the University of Maryland and several observatories around the globe would fire at them in their Apollo 11 capsule while they were in trans-lunar flight toward the moon. They were told when to look out the window toward Earth to see the bright green argon laser beams. I was picked because I worked a senior worker at a student job in the Physics Department at the University of Maryland, who built the reflector with a Texas University.

The University of Maryland spearheaded a project to deploy a lunar reflector of one hundred round mirrors that could measure the distance of the Earth to the Moon within centimeters. It is still working today 40 years later!
The University of Maryland physics professor Carroll Alley was the project’s key person during Apollo years. “Using these mirrors,” explains Alley, “we can ‘ping’ the moon with laser pulses and measure the Earth-moon distance very precisely. This is a wonderful way to learn about the moon’s orbit and to test theories of gravity.”
I flew these three small filters down to Cape Kennedy to give them to the Apollo 11 astronauts. it was a last minute small part of the laser experiment in which the University of Maryland was a world leader. I look back today and realize that I was a very, very small part of it!

THANKS, APOLLO 11 CREW!
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