Moon Exploration

The history of moon exploration started in 1950 when the cold war started. The cold war was a fight between the Russians and the U.S about ideology. The cold war was not really about the science it was a fight over which country had the most knowledge about space and the moon because the U.S and the Russians were great rivals.

History changed on October 4, 1957 when the Russians successfully launched Sputnik the worlds first artificial satellite was about the size of a basketball, weighed only about 183 pounds and took 98 minutes to orbits the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technology and scientific development. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space race.

Yuri Gagarin was the first Human in space. He was not aloud to operate the controls because the effects of weightlessness had only been tested on dogs so far and scientists were concerned about how space would have affected his work. The mission was instead controlled by ground crews, and an override key was provided in case of emergency. Yuri Gagarin's mission lasted one hour, and forty eight minutes, and ended with a landing in Kazakhstan, approximately 26km southwest of Engels.

Geology suddenly became important because geologists were able to work on the rocks and find good landing spots on the moon for astronauts. Scientist had three theories about the formation of the moon. Theory one was: the Earth and the moon were made side by side but made independently. Theory two was: they were made independently but not side by side, the moon was way off somewhere in the solar system and pulled by the Earths gravitational pull and the forth theory was the moon was a bit of the earth that spun off like mud on a bicycle wheel. Now the scientists had to wait to get the moon rocks.

The Ranger series was the first U.S attempt to obtain close up images of the moons surface. The Ranger spacecrafts were designed to fly straight down towards the moon and send images back until the moment of impact. The U.S found that there were numerous crates on the surface of the moon.

They soon found out that craters were made when a meteoroid crushed into the surface of the moon. Most of the craters on the moon were made soon after it was formed, as it was hit by thousands of meteorites. The craters are still there because the moon has no atmosphere to erode