SPACE — From our perspective on Earth, the moon looks small. But if you boarded a spaceship, donned a spacesuit, and made an epic climb to the moon, how long would it take to walk around it?
The answer depends on various factors. These include how fast you can go, how much time you spend each day walking, and what cuts you need to take to avoid dangerous topography.
On paper, a trip around the moon could take more than a year. However, in reality on the ground, there are still many challenges that must be overcome.
According to NASA, as many as 12 humans have set foot on the lunar surface. All were part of the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972.
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Footage sent back to Earth shows how challenging and exciting it would be to walk on the moon. In fact, we don’t actually walk like on earth, but rather bounce because the moon’s gravity is only one-sixth of Earth’s gravity.
However, research from NASA shows that it is possible for humans to maneuver faster on the moon than the Apollo astronauts did. Theoretically, walking around the moon could be done faster than previously thought.
During the Apollo missions, astronauts bounced on the lunar surface at a speed of 2.2 km/h. The slow speed was mainly due to their spacesuits being clumsy and pressurized as they were not designed with mobility in mind.
If the moonwalkers wore slimmer clothing, they would likely be able to move more easily and thus be faster. In 2014, a NASA study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology tested how fast humans could walk and run in simulated lunar gravity.
To do this, the team asked eight participants, three of whom were astronauts, to use a treadmill on board the DC-9 aircraft. It was indeed a test craft that flew a parabolic trajectory to simulate gravity on the moon for 20 seconds at a time.
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This experiment revealed that the participants were able to walk up to 5 km/h before running. According to the researchers, this walking speed was not only more than double that of the Apollo astronauts, but also quite close to the average speed on Earth of 7.2 km/h.
Participants are fast because they can freely swing their arms, similar to the way humans run on Earth. This pendulum movement creates a downward force, which partially compensates for the lack of gravity.
One of the reasons why Apollo astronauts were so slow was because they couldn’t move their arms freely. Their thick clothing was the main obstacle.
2023-10-01 21:16:00
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