BBC: Learning lessons from the Moon

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"- famous words, but do you know who said them?

Of course- that was Neil Armstrong, the first person to land on the Moon. 

Right, the Apollo 11 spacecraft landed Neil Armstrong on the Moon on the 20th of July 1969. But in decades after that famous event, interest in returning to the Moon fadedd away... until now. 

Summer 2023 saw the start of a new race for the Moon between Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft and India's Chandrayaan-3. Russia's rocket crashed on landing, but Chandrayaan-3 successfully touched down on the 23rd of August, making India only the fourth country to successfully land on the Moon. 

But why this sudden interest in going back to the Moon? That's what we'll be discussing in this programme and. as usual,  we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary too. 

But before we blast off, I have a question for you, Georgie. Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the Moon, and was followed by a second astronaut, Buzz Aldrin. But who was the third Apollo astronaut who flew the command module while his crewmates walked on the Moon? Was it:

a) Yuri Gagarin  b) Michael Collins     or   c) Alan Shepard?

Hmm, I think it was Michael Collins. 

Okay, Georgie, we'll find out the answer at the end of the programme. In some ways, the current interest in the Moon is really more about the origins of Earth. One theory is that during the early days of the solar system, around 4 billion years ago, another planet crashed into Earth breaking off a part which then formed the Moon. Unlike the Earth's surface, which is constantly moving, the Moon is completely still, frozen in time to create a perfectly preserved record of what happened at the birth of the solar system. Here's astronomer, Dr Becky Smethurst, explaining more to BBC Radio 4 programme, Inside Science:

...Whereas on the Moon, it's just this inert rock, there's no atmosphere so every single thingn that's happened to the Moon in its four-and-a half billion years' worth history is still recorded there on it. And so, if anyone's ever seen an image of the far side of the Moon, the side of the Moon that we cannot see from Earth is incredibly pockmarked. There are craters all over that thing, and so this is a really big deal when we're thinking about what happened to the early Earth as well, because we think all of the Earth's water came from impacts with comets and asteroids in the very early days of the solar system. ( comet- an object that moves around the sun, usually at a great distance from it 혜성)

(asteroid- one of many large rocks that circle the sun 소행성)

The rock which makes up the Moon is inert- it doesn't move. It's also full of craters- large holes in the ground caused by something hitting it. The Moon has so many of these craters, it's described as pockmarked- having a surface that's covered in small marks and scars. 

These craters play an important part in the story. Because the Moon's surface does not change, finding water there would explain a lot about how water, and therefore life, started on Earth. That's why Dr Smethurst calls the Moon mission a big deal, meaning important or significant.