Earth’s only natural satellite, and the one world beyond our own that people have walked on.
The Moon keeps the same face toward Earth because it turns exactly once for each trip around us, a lock Earth’s gravity set long ago.
Twelve astronauts walked on it between 1969 and 1972. With no air or weather, little wears its craters away, so its surface keeps a record of billions of years of impacts.
Controls
- Drag
- Orbit the camera
- Scroll / pinch
- Zoom
- ⚙ (top right)
- Animation, display, sound and info controls
Go deeper: Why we see one face ▾
Earth’s gravity raised tides in the young Moon’s rock and slowly braked its spin until one rotation took exactly one orbit, 27.3 days. The far side is not dark; we simply never see it from Earth.
Go deeper: The monolith ▾
The monolith is a nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey, not a real object. You can fly to its dig in the Tycho experience.
Sources & credits
- CGI Moon Kit (colour and elevation maps) · NASA Scientific Visualization Studio · Public domain (NASA)
- Also sprach Zarathustra (Richard Strauss) · Conducted by Philip Milman, www.classicals.de · CC BY 4.0