The First Man Stepped On The Moon In 1969

Fact of the day: The first man stepped on the moon in 1969*.

The moon was formed at around the same time as the Earth, and some theories suggest that the moon formed when a mars sized planet collided with the Earth and the moon formed from the debris.
The moon is the fifth largest natural satellite in the solar system, and the largest natural satellite in relation to its host planet.
Most people think that the moon is really close to the earth, but the distance is actually around 4 times the diameter of the earth.


(above) The Earth and the moon taken from Mars.

The moon always shows the same face to Earth as its orbit and rotation are synchronised by coincidence. It takes around 29.53 days to orbit the Earth and rotate once on its axis.
It has no atmosphere, and as a result is covered with impact craters.
The moon's noticeable effect on the Earth is the tides, but has many other effects, even effecting the weather.


(above) The moon.

*Some people think that this fact is not true, but if it wasn't we would not be able to measure the distance of the moon from the Earth by bouncing a laser of a reflective plate placed on the moon by the Apollo 11 crew. They cannot bounce a beam off the moon's surface itself as it is only as reflective as asphalt.

Images from NASA, https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/iotd.html

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