Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It orbits at an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 mi), about 30 times the diameter of Earth. Tidal forces between Earth and the Moon have synchronized the Moon's orbital period (lunar month) with its rotation period at 29.5 Earth days, causing the same side of the Moon to always face Earth.
The Moon's heavily cratered far-side. The origin of the Moon is usually explained by a Mars-sized body striking the Earth, creating a debris ring that eventually collected into a single natural satellite, the Moon, but there are a number of variations on this giant-impact hypothesis, as well as alternative explanations, and research continues into how the Moon came to be formed.
On 20 July 1969 Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, and Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. At the same time another mission, the robotic sample return mission Luna 15 by the Soviet Union, was in orbit around the Moon, becoming together with Apollo 11 the first ever case of two extraterrestrial missions being conducted at the ...
Colonization of the Moon has been imagined as early as the first half of the 17th century by John Wilkins in A Discourse Concerning a New Planet. [1] [2]In the early Space Age the USSR and the US engaged in dropping pennants [3] and raising flags on the Moon, like this Lunar Flag Assembly of 1969, but agreed internationally in 1967 with the Outer Space Treaty to not lay any claims over the ...
The far side of the Moon was first photographed on October 7, 1959, by the Soviet probe Luna 3. Though vague by today's standards, the photos showed that the far side of the Moon almost completely lacked maria. The first American probe to fly by the Moon was Pioneer 4 on March 4, 1959, which occurred shortly after Luna 1. It was the only ...
The Pre-Nectarian period is defined from the point at which the lunar crust formed, to the time of the Nectaris impact event. Nectaris is a multi-ring impact basin that formed on the near side of the Moon, and its ejecta blanket serves as a useful stratigraphic marker. 30 impact basins from this period are recognized, the oldest of which is the South Pole–Aitken basin.
Chang’e-6, the first mission to bring back soil from the moon’s far side, collected 1.9 kilograms (4.2 pounds) of lunar soil via a robotic probe in June before returning to Earth, a scientific ...
Artist's depiction of a collision between two planetary bodies. Such an impact between Earth and a Mars-sized object likely formed the Moon.. The giant-impact hypothesis, sometimes called the Theia Impact, is an astrogeology hypothesis for the formation of the Moon first proposed in 1946 by Canadian geologist Reginald Daly.