5 Less-Expected Things Astronauts Took To The Moon

Galileo is known, in part, for suggesting that heavy things and light things fall at the same rate, at least if there’s no air resistance. Unfortunately, he had no way to remove air resistance in his experiments. Instead, he rolled balls down ramps to minimize air resistance and keep the balls to measurable speeds.

The Moon has no air, and hence no air resistance. It’s a great place to demonstrate Galileo’s principle, and Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott did just that. He dropped a hammer and a feather from the same height, and they hit the ground at the same time.

When Scott in the above video says, “The feather happens to be, appropriately, a falcon feather, for our Falcon . . . ” he’s referring to their Lunar Module named Falcon. It got that name because the crew had ties to the US Air Force Academy, whose mascot is a falcon.