Preserving the Moon Landings for Posterity

Archaeologists, historians, and governments take great care to preserve human history across the globe, protecting monuments of our civilizations and traces of our origins. Even what may seem, at first, like the detritus of existence---footprints left millions of years ago, the contents of well-preserved wastebins---can serve as tangible, informative links to the past. Now, scientists and officials are working preserve some of humanity's best-known footprints, left by a giant leap for mankind, by extending those same sorts of historical protections to the Apollo missions' lunar landing sites. The tricky part is, many such protections require that a site be on the territory of a state or nation---and the US government can't claim sovereignty over any part of the moon, and doesn't want to appear as though it's trying to. But NASA and the New Mexico and California state governments have gotten onboard with the effort to safeguard the sites, spearheaded ...