MOON
About the moon:
The moon travels around the Earth and is the Earth’s only natural satellite (it’s the fifth largest natural satellite in the solar system).
The moon is the only astronomical object to which humans have travelled and landed.
The moon is about 4.5 billion years old.
The moon is about 250,000 miles (384,400 km) from Earth.
The moon travels at 2288 miles an hour (3683 km per hour).
The President of the United States created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October 1, 1958.
NASA’s first high-profile programme involving human spaceflight was Project Mercury, an effort to learn if humans could survive the rigors of spaceflight. On May 5, 1961, Alan B Shepard Jr became the first American to fly into space, when he rode his Mercury capsule on a 15-minute suborbital mission. John H Glenn Jr became the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962.
“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil A Armstrong uttered these famous words on July 20, 1969 when the Apollo 11 mission fulfilled Kennedy’s challenge by successfully landing Armstrong and Edwin E “Buzz” Aldrin Jr on the moon.
Six of the Apollo missions (11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17) landed on the moon to study soil mechanics, meteoroids, seismic, heat flow, lunar ranging, magnetic fields and solar wind.
Source: Moon press kit