American flags still stand on the moon after 40 years

The latest series of images from the US Aerospace Agency (NASA) shows five of the flags astronauts plugged into the moon still standing today.

Astronaut Pete Conrad plugs the American flag during a landing trip on his face
moon of Apollo 12 ship in November 1969.Today the flag still stands.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA's moon-flying spacecraft, captured the positions that the US spacecraft landed on the moon from 1969 to 1972. After analyzing some photos, the scientists concluded that only one of the six flags that the American astronaut plugged into the moon fell, Space reported.

"From the photos of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we firmly believe the national flags, except for the flag that was inserted in the Apollo 11 landing, on the moon still standing. Their shadows fell to the ground , " Mark Robinson , a NASA expert, said.

A picture of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the shadow of the flag
The astronaut plugged in the Apollo 16 landing on the moon in 1972.

After each landing on the moon, the American astronauts always plug a flag to mark the country's scientific achievements. The first flag was inserted after the Apollo 11 boarded the moon on July 20, 1969. On that day the astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first person in the world to walk on the moon, said an immortal sentence: "This is a short step of a human being, but a jump to humanity."

The last flagging took place on December 14, 1972. Since then humans have not returned to the moon yet.

"I thought the flags would be destroyed by ultraviolet rays and extreme temperatures on the moon, but they still exist. That's what makes me feel surprised," Robinson said.