MooN ☭ EXPLoRinG THe NeXT HoMeLanD ParT 1

MooN ☭ EXPLoRinG THe NeXT HoMeLanD ParT 1. The physical exploration of the Moon began when Luna 2, a space probe launched by the Soviet Union, impacted the surface of the Moon on September 14, 1959. Prior to that the only available means of exploration had been observation. The invention of the optical telescope brought about the first leap in the quality of lunar observations. Galileo Galilei is generally credited as the first person to use a telescope for astronomical purposes; having made his own telescope in 1609, the mountains and craters on the lunar surface were among his first observations using it.

In 1969, Project Apollo first successfully landed people on the Moon. They placed scientific experiments there and returned rocks and data that suggested the Moon is of a similar composition to the Earth. In the philosophy of Aristotle, the heavens, starting at the Moon, were the realm of perfection, the sublunary region was the realm of change and corruption, and any resemblance between these regions was strictly ruled out. Aristotle himself suggested that the Moon partook perhaps of some contamination from the realm of corruption.[1] In his little book On the Face in the Moon's Orb, Plutarch expressed rather different views on the relationship between the Moon and Earth. He suggested that the Moon had deep recesses in which the light of the Sun did not reach and that the spots are nothing but the shadows of rivers or deep chasms. He also entertained the possibility that the Moon was inhabited. It had been suggested already in antiquity that the Moon was a perfect mirror and that its markings were reflections of earthly features, but this explanation was easily dismissed because the face of the Moon never changes as it moves about the Earth.[1] The explanation that finally became standard was that there were variations of "density" in the Moon that caused this otherwise perfectly spherical body to appear the way it does.[1] The perfection of the Moon, and therefore the heavens, was thus preserved.

The medieval followers of Aristotle, in the Islamic world and then in Christian Europe, tried to make sense of the lunar spots in Aristotelian terms.[1] Thomas Harriot, as well as Galilei, drew the first telescopic representation of the Moon and observed it for several years. His drawings, however, remained unpublished.[1] The first map of the Moon was made by the Belgian cosmographer and astronomer Michael Florent van Langren in 1645.[1] Two years later a much more influential effort was published by Johannes Hevelius. In 1647 Hevelius published Selenographia, the first treatise entirely devoted to the Moon. Hevelius's nomenclature, although used in Protestant countries until the eighteenth century, was replaced by the system published in 1651 by the Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli, who gave the large naked-eye spots the names of seas and the telescopic spots (now called craters) the name of philosophers and astronomers.[1] In 1753 the Croatian Jesuit and astronomer Roger Joseph Boscovich discovered the absence of atmosphere on the Moon. In 1824 Franz von Gruithuisen explained the formation of craters as a result of meteorite strikes.

Land on the Moon in Google Earth. With Moon in Google Earth, you can take tours narrated by Apollo astronauts, view 3D models of landed spacecraft, zoom into 360-degree photos, and watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions. Download Google Earth 5.0 to start exploring the Moon. http://earth.google.com/moon/

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