July 20, 2009 

ITHACA -- 40 years ago Monday, man first stepped foot on the moon.
     This moment -- and what was learned after -- could not have been possible without the work of scientists at a Southern Tier university.
     “It’s amazing to me that it's been that long,” said Cornell University astronomy professor Dr. Joe Burns.  “Especially when you step back and think that the first landing took place just 12 years after the first launch.  Such a short time and now such a long time."
     Burns had just started at teaching at Cornell during the "Space Race."
     In the 60's, NASA put a lot of money into universities, including Cornell.  It helped build the space science building on campus.
     “It was a real hot bed of planetary and lunar activity [here],” said Burns.
     Another Cornell professor, Tommy Gold, invented the camera NASA used to take the first pictures from the moon's surface during the Apollo 11 mission.
     And when Neil, Buzz, and Michael returned to earth, they brought back moon samples to Cornell.
     “By seeing the nature of the materials in there, really led to our understanding that the moon was formed by an enormous collision into the earth and a piece of the earth blew off and went into an orbit around the earth,” explained Burns.
     Burns doesn't think we should go back to the moon -- he says there's much more to explore.
     But he says the message on this day is the same as it was 40 years ago: If America tries, it can do anything.
     “This opportunity to see the earth sitting as a blue dot from space -- that really changed our perspective on the earth, on ourselves, the future, and our place in the universe,” said Burns.
     Cornell isn't the only place in the Southern Tier that contributed to the Apollo 11 mission. Corning Incorporated made the glass for the windows on the lunar module.

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