Even Carl Sagan thought there might be critters with legs and heads running around there. People were very optimistic in 1976 when the Viking landers plopped down onto Mars that there would be life. Shostak: Mars was the Great Red Hope, if you will, of extraterrestrial life in the solar system. LS: In 1969, did scientists think there might be aliens somewhere else in the solar system? Suddenly, the universe was a little more open. I think that, from the public's point of view, this meant that going to the stars wasn't always going to be just fiction. But the Apollo missions showed that you could travel from one world to another on a rocket - and maybe aliens could, too. Up until then, rockets and so forth were just science fiction. That said, I think the moon landing did affect the public perception of extraterrestrial life. Plus, just look at the moon: There's no liquid, temperatures in the sun are hundreds of degrees, temperatures in the shade are minus hundreds of degrees - It's awful! They knew for 100 years that the moon had no atmosphere, because when stars pass behind the moon they just disappear if the moon had an atmosphere, stars would get dimmer as they got closer to the moon's edge. By 1969, most scientists expected the moon was going to be dead. LS: What did the moon landing teach humans about extraterrestrial life? Highlights of our conversation (lightly edited for clarity) appear below. Live Science recently spoke with him to find out more about how the moon landing changed the scientific community's pursuit of aliens and the world's perception of them. Shostak has been searching for signs of intelligent life in the universe for most of his life (and, fittingly, shares a birthday with the Apollo 11 landing). "I think the moon landing had something to do with that." "Today, about 30 percent of the public thinks the Earth is being visited by aliens in saucers, despite the evidence of that being very poor," Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute - a nonprofit research center focused on the search for alien life in the universe - told Live Science. The astronauts were confined within one of NASA's Mobile Quarantine Facilities for 21 days to ensure they would not contaminate Earth with any potential lunar bacteria after their short lunar sojourn. Richard Nixon welcomes the Apollo 11 astronauts back to Earth after their historic voyage to the moon.
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