Exploration of the Moon

[7] Aspects of the Moon were identified and aggregated in lunar deities from prehistoric times and were eventually documented and put into symbols from the very first instances of writing in the 4th millennium BC.

[10] The oldest named astronomer and poet Enheduanna, Akkadian high priestess to the lunar deity Nanna/Sin and pricess, daughter of Sargon the Great (c. 2334 – c. 2279 BCE), had the Moon tracked in her chambers.

[12][13] The ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, whose non-religious view of the heavens was one cause for his imprisonment and eventual exile,[17] reasoned that the Sun and Moon were both giant spherical rocks, and that the latter reflected the light of the former.

[18] Shen Kuo of the Song dynasty created an allegory equating the waxing and waning of the Moon to a round ball of reflective silver that, when doused with white powder and viewed from the side, would appear to be a crescent.

[21][22] By the Middle Ages, before the invention of the telescope, an increasing number of people began to recognise the Moon as a sphere, though many believed that it was "perfectly smooth".

[23] In 1609, Galileo Galilei drew one of the first telescopic drawings of the Moon in his book Sidereus Nuncius and noted that it was not smooth but had mountains and craters.

Later in the 17th century, Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi drew a map of the Moon and gave many craters the names they still have today.

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.

[25] The now disproven possibility that the Moon contains vegetation and is inhabited by selenites was seriously considered by major astronomers of the early modern period even into the first decades of the 19th century.

In 1834–1836, Wilhelm Beer and Johann Heinrich Mädler published their four-volume Mappa Selenographica and the book Der Mond in 1837, which firmly established the conclusion that the Moon has no bodies of water nor any appreciable atmosphere.

...I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

...let it be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a firm commitment to a new course of action—a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs...[30] Full text Ranger 1 launched in August 1961, just three months after President Kennedy's speech.

A number of problems with launch vehicles, ground equipment, and spacecraft electronics plagued the Ranger program and early probe missions in general.

These lessons helped in Mariner 2, the only successful U.S. space probe after Kennedy's famous speech to congress and before his death in November 1963.

On December 24, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8—Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders—became the first human beings to enter lunar orbit and see the far side of the Moon in person.

The first humans to walk on the lunar surface were Neil Armstrong, commander of the U.S. mission Apollo 11 and his fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

[37] The European Space Agency launched a small, low-cost lunar orbital probe called SMART 1 on September 27, 2003.

[42] Chang'e 4 deployed the Yutu-2 Moon rover, which subsequently became the current record distance-holder for lunar surface travel.

[48] China sent Chang'e 6 on 3 May 2024, which conducted the first lunar sample return from Apollo Basin on the far side of the Moon.

Chandrayaan-2 also carried India's first lander and rover, but due to a last minute technical glitch in the landing system, the spacecraft crash-landed.

[68] In January 2018 the foundation announced that the prize would go unclaimed as none of the finalist teams would be able to make a launch attempt by the deadline.

According to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, "We are building a domestic American capability to get back and forth to the surface of the moon.".

The mission was launched on 23 October 2014 with the Chinese Chang'e 5-T1 test spacecraft, attached to the upper stage of a Long March 3C/G2 rocket.

[72][73] The 4M spacecraft made a Moon flyby on a night of October 28, 2014, after which it entered elliptical Earth orbit, exceeding its designed lifetime by four times.

[74][75] The Beresheet lander operated by Israel Aerospace Industries and SpaceIL impacted the Moon on April 11, 2019, after a failed landing attempt.

[76] Following the abandoned US Constellation program, plans for crewed flights followed by moonbases were declared by Russia, ESA, China, Japan, India, and South Korea.

Russia also announced plans to resume its previously frozen project Luna-Glob, an uncrewed lander and orbiter, which was slated to launch in 2021 but did not manifest.

The precise location was termed the Shackleton Connecting Ridge, which has near-continuous solar exposure and line-of-sight with Earth for communication.

[82] ESA's Moonlight Initiative aims to create a small network of communication and navigation satellites orbiting the Moon to support the Artemis landings.

[84] Due to the lower gravity and relative motion, time passes more quickly on the Moon, making every 24-hour period elapse 56 microseconds early when measured from Earth.