The Moon

 The moon is a ball of rock that spins on it's own axis as well as orbiting the earth and traveling with the earth as it travels around the sun. In 1969, astronauts walked on the moon. Two of the astronauts were Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. All the planets in the solar system have moons except for Mercury and Venus. The earth's moon is one of the largest moons in the solar system. It is about one-quarter the size of earth. The surface of the moon has changed very little for millions of years due to no atmosphere, and without an atmosphere there is no weathering effect. Since there is no atmosphere on the moon then that means no-one would be able to hear you scream on the moon, same as in space. The moon's surface is full of craters, up to hundreds of miles full of them. Some of them were caused by asteroids crashing into the moon millions of years ago. The moon is a good object for novice astronomers to observe because it's surface features are easily visible to the naked eye. The dark areas are flat patches called "maria". By using binoculars you can see some of the craters of the moon with very good detail.
Astronomers cannot say for certain where the moon came from. It may have broken off from Earth, been a rock that was captured by the gravity of Earth, or formed from material around the young Earth. A fourth idea, the Big Splash Theory, is that a mars sized-body collided with the young Earth and the debris from this collision formed the Moon.
The seventeen Apollo missions of the 1960's and 1970's are still regarded as the high point of space exploration. These missions set twelve astronauts on the Moon and returned them safely back to Earth. The results form surface experiments, orbital flights, and many photographs, are used to produce our picture of the Moon's surface.



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