The Moon will soon get its first flapping flag, thanks to elementary school students from Changsha in central China’s Hunan Province.
When the USA first sent astronauts to the Moon on Apollo 11, they wanted to plant an American flag on the surface. The problem was that a regular flag would look somewhat disappointing, as the Moon has an incredibly thin atmosphere, meaning the stars and stripes would droop and flop the second Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin let it go.
The solution they opted for, proposed by NASA engineer Jack Kinzler, was pretty simple. He added a crossbar to the top of the flag, sewn into it to hold it out. There were other problems to face, too, especially the maneuverability of the spacesuits worn by the two astronauts, making it difficult to bend close to the ground, while the lunar surface itself turned out to be quite difficult to dig into. For this reason, the flagpole itself was made of two pieces, with the first part being hammered into the ground by one astronaut, before the other placed the second section on top. Once that was done, the flag looked pretty impressive, even appearing as though it was flapping.
“Once they got the flag up, several factors made it look as though it was flying,” Annie Platoff, a librarian at the UC Santa Barbara Library and expert on flags on the lunar surface, explained in a statement 50 years after the first Moon walk. “First there were wrinkles in it because of how tightly it was packed. And these add to the illusion that the flag is waving. Also, the astronauts didn’t always get the horizontal crossbar extended all the way – they were working in pressurized spacesuits and really cumbersome gloves, after all – which caused the flag to bunch up in places. That also made it look like it’s waving.”
Now, over half a century later, we will soon finally get the first actually waving flag on the Moon. In 2026, China intends to send the Chang’e-7 mission to the lunar south pole. Onboard this mission, along with scientific research equipment, will be an educational payload, the result of school students in Changsha, China. This includes a flag that has been specially designed with wires inside of it, which will make the flag flap using electromagnetism.
“This initiative is intended to enhance young students’ understanding of China’s space program and inspire their interest in pursuing space exploration in the future,” Zhang Tianzhu of DSEL/Institute of Technology told China Global Television Network.
When the flag is placed, assuming that the mission is successful, it will become the first ever flag to flap away on the Moon. Which, we’re sure we can all agree, is pretty neat.
