Man-In-Space Firsts:
Space Litterbugs
TABLE OF CONTENTS
First junk on the Moon: In September 1959, the USSR intentionally crashed its unmanned probe Luna 2 into the Moon, the first time Man landed anything on the Moon. The wreckage still is there.

First to litter the Moon: Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. in 1969 left the Moon littered with a gold olive branch, cameras, tools, boots, bags, containers, armrests, brackets, a U.S. flag and flagstaff, a solar wind experiment mast, a TV camera and power cable, a Moonquake detector, a laser light reflector, a plaque, their Eagle lander, life-support backpacks, an Apollo 1 shoulder patch remembering three dead astronauts, medals commemorating two dead cosmonauts, and a 1.5-in. silicon disk with goodwill speeches from heads of 23 Earth nations.

First garbage cans in space: Mercury astronauts called their tiny capsules "garbage cans."

First dirt in space: Mohammed Faris, the first Syrian visitor to the Mir space station, carried along a portrait of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and a vial of Damascus soil in 1987.

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