You know the campus legend that says there's a Michigan flag on the Moon?
It's not true.
Here's what is: Two alumni set foot on the lunar surface on the Apollo 15 mission in 1971. They established a chapter of the University's alumni association on the Moon. They carried with them about 20 flags into orbit.
But according to Harm Buning, a retired aerospace engineering professor who knows the Apollo 15 astronauts personally, rumors of an extraterrestrial block M flag being only one of two along with the U.S. flag are misguided.
Buning said he thinks the rumor started because of the 20 miniature Michigan flags that accompanied the astronauts as they broke the bounds of Earth but never left the spacecraft. Upon their return to Earth, some of the flags were given to the aerospace engineering department. Buning keeps one at his Ann Arbor home. None of the flags ever made it to the lunar surface.
University lore, though, insists one did.
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