Space: THE EMERGING FACE OF THE MOON

AX the high drama of man's first halting steps on the moon was recalled in remarkable detail last week when NASA released the first color photographs from the Apollo mission. The still shots in particular displayed the harsh beauty of the barren landscape around Tranquillity Base as strong unfiltered sunlight etched myriad craters in deep shadow. The 16-mm. motion-picture films of Eagle's touchdown on the lunar surface brought back that dangerous moment with tense immediacy. The movies were so clear and sharp that they allowed scientists to pinpoint the landing area precisely. And with the exact coordinates to guide them, astronomers at California's Lick Observatory were finally able to bounce a laser beam off the reflecting mirror left behind by the astronauts.

Like everything else that came back aboard Apollo 11, the film had to undergo elaborate decontamination procedures in Houston. Technicians were doubly cautious because, in a final checkout of their methods, a strip of test film was accidentally destroyed. The astronauts themselves were so curious about their photographic efforts that they waited up late one night to see the first results. They had every reason to be satisfied. Their pictures added up to a remarkable visual record of man's most adventurous journey.

The pictures also contributed immeasurably to the scientific detective work now under way at Houston. There, inside the Manned Spacecraft Center's

Lunar Receiving Lab (LRL), where the Apollo 11 astronauts are spending their postflight quarantine, teams of scientists are trying to put together bits and pieces of the lunar puzzle. Much of the work proceeds at a slow, painstaking pace. Last week, some NASA geologists seemed almost apologetic about their progress. "I've never been so frustrated in my life," complained Mineralogist Elbert King, the LRL's curator. "We've been working for years to get the lunar samples in our clutches. But I was unable to find a single mineral that I could immediately identify."

Even so, the face of the moon is slowly beginning to emerge. Poring over the moon rocks with their microscopes, spectroscopes and radiation counters, the LRL's scientists have already pried loose some of the moon's long-guarded secrets. By analyzing a pinch of the powdery lunar dust with a flame ionization detector, Chemist Richard Johnson of NASA's Ames Research Center found the first conclusive evidence of organic compounds on the moon. The presence of these carbon-containing compounds does not prove the existence of life on the moon—simply that its soil contains an element that is basic to life on earth. Johnson found only 25 parts per million of such compounds in his lunar sample, compared with perhaps 10,000 p.p.m. in a typical backyard sample of the earth's soil. The scientists also confirmed a surprising abundance of titanium on the moon. Though this space-age metal, vital in the manufacture of heatresistant parts for jet engines and rockets, is relatively rare on earth, one lunar sample was assayed at 6% titanium.