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Armstrong didn't actually do an experiment related to Galileo during the Apollo 11 mission, but there was one carried out on Apollo 15. This related to an experiment that Galileo was supposed to have conducted from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, dropping items of different masses. Aristotle had said that objects of different masses would fall at different speeds, but some people thought differently. Galileo did not in fact record actually doing this, and it is believed that it was really just a "thought experiment". The best way to try this out is in a vacuum, so that there is no air resistance, and the size and shape of the objects being used won't make any difference. So on Apollo 15, Dave Scott, the mission commander, dropped a geological hammer and a feather. If they reached the ground at the same time, this would prove that Galileo's view was correct. This is exactly what happened; the hammer and the feather fell slowly in the Moon's 1/6 gravity and hit the ground together.

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16y ago

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