Moon

The Silver Moon

Exploration

In 1609, Galileo Galilei was the first to use a telescope to observe the Moon, discovering that its surface had mountains and craters — disproving the idea of a perfectly smooth celestial body.
In 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik-1, starting the space age; in 1959, Luna 2 became the first human-made object to impact the Moon's surface.
In 1959, the Soviet Luna 3 photographed the far side of the Moon for the first time — a region never visible from Earth due to the Moon’s synchronous rotation.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon during Apollo 11, marking a monumental milestone in human technological achievement.
In 1972, Apollo 17 became the last crewed mission to the Moon. Since then, lunar exploration has continued only through robotic spacecraft and satellites.
In the 21st century, China, India, the U.S., and others began a new phase of Moon exploration, planning bases, resource extraction, and telescopes on the lunar far side.
Scientists use retroreflectors left by Apollo missions for laser ranging, which accurately measures the Earth-Moon distance and revealed: the Moon drifts away by 3.8 cm each year.

The first person to see the Moon up close from space was American astronaut Frank Borman, commander of the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. The crew became the first to orbit the Moon, observing its far side and capturing the first images from lunar orbit.

Landscape

Surface

The Moon's surface features craters, plains (maria), ridges, and valleys, shaped by meteorite impacts and ancient volcanic activity more than 3 billion years ago.
Dark “maria” are basaltic lava plains formed after massive impacts, where molten lava seeped through cracks and cooled, creating darker regions visible from Earth.
The Moon’s bright highlands are older than the maria, contain more craters, and consist mainly of anorthosite rocks from the Moon’s early crust formation phase.
The largest impact basin — South Pole–Aitken — is 2,500 km wide and among the oldest surface features in the entire Solar System.
Regolith is a loose layer of dust, rocks, and debris formed by millions of meteorite impacts continuously bombarding and breaking down the Moon’s solid surface.
Without an atmosphere, erosion does not occur on the Moon, allowing even ancient craters to remain well-preserved for billions of years without significant changes.

Interior

Lunar soil — regolith — contains basalt fragments, anorthosite, minerals, and glass formed by micro-impacts and thermal breakdown processes on the Moon’s surface.
Regolith depth varies from 2 to 20 meters, depending on the region. Highland areas have thicker layers due to their age and greater meteorite exposure.
Between 1969–1972, the Apollo program returned 382 kg of lunar soil, enabling detailed studies of its mineralogy, age, and isotopic composition on Earth.
Studies showed that lunar rocks range from 3.2 to 4.5 billion years old — older than most rock formations found on Earth today.
Lunar soil contains pyroxene, olivine, and ilmenite — minerals common in igneous rocks — plus microscopic glass beads formed from meteorite impact heat.
Lunar dust is highly abrasive and fine-grained. Astronauts reported it infiltrated suits and equipment, damaging filters, seals, and mechanical parts on missions.
Ilmenite in lunar soil contains titanium and oxygen, sparking interest for future resource extraction to support life in lunar bases or long-term missions.
China’s Chang’e-5 mission in 2020 brought back samples from younger regions, only 1.97 billion years old — the youngest lunar rocks collected to date.
Geochemical studies confirm the Moon formed after Earth collided with a Mars-sized body, Theia, ejecting debris that eventually coalesced into our natural satellite.