Talk:Exploration of the Moon

Duplication of mission lists
Here are FIVE different pages trying to track lunar missions and timelines:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lunar_probes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_exploration_of_the_Moon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_and_future_lunar_missions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_the_Moon#Timeline_of_Moon_exploration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Moon_spacecraft

Is there a way to consolidate all of these into a single data source and reference as needed ? Its especially relevant for upcoming and current missions, which have ever changing launch dates and data. This is something that WikiProject Moon should be watching very closely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.87.58.153 (talk) 22:01, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

An excellent source on the history and details of all launched lunar spacecraft for reference : http://weebau.com/satplan/plan_2.htm Savuporo (talk) 03:24, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Invalid source
last (5th) external link is what was is supposed to be? Camicio 21:39, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) ↑ 404 error. URL accessed on 2006-03-20.
 * What I can make up from the URL this was supposed to be a news item for the Chinese craft that is expected to launch in 2007. CNN has a newer and more complete article at http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/03/12/china.space/index.html. So maybe we could use that one instead. BaseLine 13:18, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

(9th) external link is a Yahoo "we've moved" page. Furthermore, regardless of what the 10th link says about searching for helium-3 on the moon, this is highly likely to be erroneous, given that the primary source of the official mission objectives page (http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/objective_scientific.htm) does not mention any such thing. 64.81.73.35 (talk) 18:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Lunar Exploration
It would be nice if this page could contain a list of every spacecraft sent towards the moon. The name would kind of suggest that that's what the purpose would be. Tuvas 16:31, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps replicating some of the information from or from ([]). Any other sensible sources? Redfoxtx 10:13, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I have created a page Robotic exploration of the Moon listing all missions. Lunokhod 17:46, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Galileo
The Galileo flybys need to be mentioned under recent exploration. These returned useful scientific data. Lunokhod 17:48, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Future lunar missions

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the merge. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

rename: Future lunar missions -> List of future lunar missions

I think the article Future lunar missions would be better as a subsection of this article. Much of the information is already here anyway, making Future lunar missions somewhat redundant. Mlm42 13:31, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * What if we rename the "future lunar missions" page to "list of future lunar missions"? Lunokhod 13:40, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I still think that such a page would be a list of (this is a guess) less than twenty missions, with short summaries and links to the main articles. So why not just include this list directly in the Future missions section of Exploration of the Moon? If Exploration of the Moon gets too big, then we can split off the future missions list as a separate page.. but until then i think we will just be creating an unneccessary redundancy. Mlm42 13:54, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I only use "future lunar missions" as a list in order to find out what will be launched and when. Its not clear to me that if you merge this with "exploration of the moon" that people will know where to find this information. I have nothing against duplicated all this material in "exploration of the Moon", but the self contained list is useful (to some at least) as well. In any case, I don't feel too strongly about this. I'll put an advert on the Moon project and see if we can get some more opinions. Lunokhod 16:02, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The difficulty with duplicate material is that it requires maintainence in two places. Could the future lunar missions list be a sub-page, transcluded into the exploration of the moon page? Sdsds 20:23, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Transclusion stops the watch function working properly - e.g. the problem with portals. sbandrews 14:31, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Then maybe the rename: Future lunar missions -> List of future lunar missions makes sense. The section of Exploration of the Moon could then start with, and it's clear that if an editor just wants to add a list entry, without providing much supporting text, that's the place to do it. Sdsds 15:38, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

U.S. view of space race
Thank-you to all the prior editors who have made the space race section of this article so unbiased. That is great! From a U.S. perspective, the Kennedy speech is really a pivotal moment, so I've added a few sentences about that. I also re-ordered the description of events to be more chronological. Are those changes are OK with everyone? Sdsds 10:28, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Not everyone will agree with it.

-G —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.68.63.162 (talk) 19:08, 10 May 2007 (UTC).

And China moon program?
no reference on wikipedia.

http://www.spacetoday.org/China/ChinaMoonflight.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4146226.stm

The validity of this all
I'm having a hard time believing anyone went to the moon. With the technology and information at the time, how is this possible? Or am I missing something? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.191.34.227 (talk) 07:01, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Aristotle: Primary source?
Aristotle himself suggested that the Moon partook perhaps of some contamination from the realm of corruption. The source for this - The Galileo Project website - does not itself give any reference. Does anyone know where precisely Aristotle says this? I don't think this opinion is to be found in any of his surviving works. Perhaps someone else - Plutarch, Simplicius, etc - attributed it to Aristotle. - Eroica (talk) 13:18, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

High speed (and higher speed) impacts on the moon
The main article could be improved by giving us more information on the recent high speed impact between a lunar projectile traveling 9,000 mph (or is it kph), and what it would take to send something up there at 18,000 mph. If 9,000 mph wasn't fast enough, why not send another one up, and have it hit at twice the speed? 216.99.198.61 (talk) 03:00, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

This article is fail
An article about exploration of the moon that does not list ONE THING that the explorations have found. Absoltuely ZERO information on what the explorations have discovered other than "lunar rocks lawl". Fix this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.65.245.3 (talk) 09:09, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Alternatively, you could fix it yourself. --Lacarids (talk) 23:38, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Armstrong Quote
Armstrong's first steps were the hallmark moment in lunar exploration. A lot came before them and after them... but millions of people around the world watched him step onto the moon. The article would be better if it had the "one small step" audio clip embedded. --Lacarids (talk) 23:42, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Copyright violation
I am very concerned about the use of non-free images such as the ESA, JAXA and ISRO logos to denote the operators of spacecraft in this article. They can easily be replaced in this manner with text indicating the agency name, and therefore their use here violates copyright, and cannot be justified as fair use. -- W.  D.   Graham  09:07, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Complete lunar mission navbox
Hello all. Excuse my unfamiliarity here. I have had a bit of experience in navbox creation, and I am thinking of creating a navbox that aims to include all lunar missions. I realise there are already similar navboxes: Template:Moon_spacecraft which only contains robotic missions, and Template:Manned_lunar_spacecraft which only lists models of manned lunar spacecraft (not even each manned mission). I thought it would be wise to suggest the idea here before creation - is there a particular reason why there is not already (or is there?) a navbox that includes all missions? If I were to create such a navbox, it could be structured chronologically (e.g. Template:Mars_spacecraft) as opposed to the current structure of Template:Moon_spacecraft.

If this proposal is a bad idea for some reason, I have an alternative; instead of merging the two navboxes, chronological renovation of Template:Moon_spacecraft, as well as the creation of another navbox that lists each manned mission to the moon (I'm surprised there isn't one already). Though I prefer the first proposal. Comments, questions, ideas? Ypna (talk) 11:13, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
 * With no objections I went ahead, Template:Moon spacecraft. Ypna (talk) 00:35, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Deleted material
This material did not seem pertinent to this article, containing a mixture of erroneous or retrograde views on the Moon and things related only to the Moon's appearance as seen from Earth or its effect on Earth. The material can go elsewhere.RandomCritic (talk) 12:57, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

In Mesopotamia, Babylonian astronomers by the early first millennium BC had discovered a repeating 18-year cycle of lunar eclipses. They had also known by this time that 19 solar years is about equal to 235 lunar months. In the 2nd century BC, Seleucus of Seleucia correctly theorized that tides were caused by the Moon, although he believed that the interaction was mediated by the Earth's atmosphere. According to Strabo (1.1.9), Seleucus was the first to state that the tides are due to the attraction of the Moon, and that the height of the tides depends on the Moon's position relative to the Sun.

By the mid-first millennium BC, Indian astronomers described the Moon’s monthly elongation in the Aitareya Brāhmana.

In Aristotle's (384–322 BC) description of the universe, the Moon marked the boundary between the spheres of the mutable elements (earth, water, air and fire), and the imperishable stars of aether. This separation was held to be part of Aristotelian physics for many centuries after. In the philosophy of Aristotle, the heavens, starting at the Moon, were the realm of perfection, the sublunary region was the realm of change and corruption, and any resemblance between these regions was strictly ruled out. Aristotle himself suggested that the Moon partook perhaps of some contamination from the realm of corruption.

It had been suggested already in antiquity that the Moon was a perfect mirror and that its markings were reflections of earthly features, but this explanation was easily dismissed because the face of the Moon never changes as it moves about the Earth. The explanation that finally became standard was that there were variations of "density" in the Moon that caused this otherwise perfectly spherical body to appear the way it does. The perfection of the Moon, and therefore the heavens, was thus preserved.

During the Warring States of China, astronomer Shi Shen (fl. 4th century BC) gave instructions for predicting solar and lunar eclipses based on the relative positions of the Moon and Sun. Although the Chinese of the Han Dynasty (202 BC–202 AD) believed the Moon to be energy equated to qi, their 'radiating influence' theory recognized that the light of the Moon was merely a reflection of the Sun (mentioned by Anaxagoras above). This was supported by mainstream thinkers such as Jing Fang (78–37 BC) and Zhang Heng (78–139 AD), but it was also opposed by the influential philosopher Wang Chong (27–97 AD). Jing Fang noted the sphericity of the Moon, while Zhang Heng accurately described a lunar eclipse and solar eclipse. These assertions were supported by Shen Kuo (1031–1095) of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) who 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. He also noted that the reason for the Sun and Moon not eclipsing every time their paths met was because of a small obliquity in their orbital paths.

In 1021, the Islamic physicist, Alhazen, accurately explained the Moon illusion in the Book of Optics, which stated that judging the distance of an object depends on there being an uninterrupted sequence of intervening bodies between the object and the observer. With the Moon, there are no intervening objects, therefore since the size of an object depends on its observed distance, which is in this case inaccurate, the Moon appears larger on the horizon. Through Alhazen's work, the Moon illusion gradually came to be accepted as a psychological phenomenon. He also investigated moonlight, which he proved through experimentation that it originates from sunlight and correctly concluded that it "emits light from those portions of its surface which the sun's light strikes."

The contrast between the brighter highlands and darker maria create the patterns seen by different cultures as the Man in the Moon, the rabbit and the buffalo, among others. In 1835, the Great Moon Hoax fooled some people into thinking that there were exotic animals living on the Moon.


 * Thx, as far as I can see you seem to be knowledgeable about the subject, so it would be really helpful if you could indicate what parts should be moved to other articles and what has to be deleted for good. Currently, you did half the job, leaving the rest to other editors to figure out what to do. I don't think this is a good idea, since this is very inefficient and requires other editors to reproduce your thought process. Either delete all the content you posted here, or find the appropriate articles where some of the removed content might fit. Otherwise I'll insert the whole thing back into the article.  R fassbind  – talk   10:11, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

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Table is missing some rangers
The table is missing Rangers 1 and 2, both of which were launched in 1961. They were failures, but looking at all the attempted Luna launches, the table does not seem to exclude failures. DrZygote214 (talk) 22:39, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

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The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 06:51, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Luna 3 moon.jpg

Copy from Colonization of the Moon
I did just take this out from the article Colonization of the Moon as a duplicate of this article. I did want to copy it now here to give you the opportunity if there is something useable for this article, but most of it should be here allready. I didnt want to just delete it at the source article.

Copied text: Exploration of the lunar surface by spacecraft began in 1959 with the Soviet Union's Luna program. Luna 1 missed the Moon, but Luna 2 made a hard landing (impact) into its surface, and became the first artificial object on an extraterrestrial body. The same year, the Luna 3 mission radioed photographs to Earth of the Moon's hitherto unseen far side, marking the beginning of a decade-long series of robotic lunar explorations.

Responding to the Soviet program of space exploration, US President John F. Kennedy in 1961 told the US Congress on May 25: "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." The same year the Soviet leadership made some of its first public pronouncements about landing a man on the Moon and establishing a lunar base.

Crewed exploration of the lunar surface began in 1968 when the Apollo 8 spacecraft orbited the Moon with three astronauts on board. This was mankind's first direct view of the far side. The following year, Apollo 11's Lunar Module landed two astronauts on the Moon, proving the ability of humans to travel to the Moon, perform scientific research work there, and bring back sample materials.

Additional missions to the Moon continued this exploration phase. In 1969, the Apollo 12 mission landed next to the Surveyor 3 spacecraft, demonstrating precision landing capability. The use of a crewed vehicle on the Moon's surface was demonstrated in 1971 with the Lunar Roving Vehicle during Apollo 15. Apollo 16 made the first landing within the rugged lunar highlands. Interest in further exploration of the Moon was beginning to wane among the American public. In 1972, Apollo 17 was the final Apollo lunar mission, and further planned missions were scrapped at the directive of President Nixon. Instead, focus was turned to the Space Shuttle and crewed missions in near Earth orbit.

In addition to its scientific returns, the Apollo program also provided valuable lessons about living and working in the lunar environment.

The Soviet crewed lunar programs failed to send a crewed mission to the Moon. In 1966 Luna 9 was the first probe to achieve a soft landing and return close-up shots of the lunar surface. Luna 16 in 1970 returned the first Soviet lunar soil samples, while in 1970 and 1973 during the Lunokhod program two robotic rovers landed on the Moon. Lunokhod 1 explored the lunar surface for 322 days, and Lunokhod 2 operated on the Moon about four months only but covered a third more distance. 1974 saw the end of the Soviet Moonshot, two years after the last American crewed landing. Besides the crewed landings, an abandoned Soviet Moon program included building the moonbase "Zvezda", which was the first detailed project with developed mockups of expedition vehicles and surface modules.

In the decades following, interest in exploring the Moon faded considerably, and only a few dedicated enthusiasts supported a return. Evidence of lunar ice at the poles gathered by NASA's Clementine (1994) and Lunar Prospector (1998) missions rekindled some discussion, as did the potential growth of a Chinese space program that contemplated its own mission to the Moon. Subsequent research suggested that there was far less ice present (if any) than had originally been thought, but that there may still be some usable deposits of hydrogen in other forms. In September 2009, the Chandrayaan probe of India, carrying an ISRO instrument, discovered that the lunar soil contains 0.1% water by weight, overturning hypotheses that had stood for 40 years.

In 2004, US President George W. Bush called for a plan to return crewed missions to the Moon by 2020 (since cancelled – see Constellation program). On June 18, 2009, NASA's LCROSS/LRO mission to the Moon was launched. The LCROSS mission was designed to acquire research information to assist with future lunar exploratory missions and was scheduled to conclude with a controlled collision of the craft on the lunar surface. LCROSS's mission concluded as scheduled with its controlled impact on October 9, 2009.

In 2010, due to reduced congressional appropriations for NASA, President Barack Obama halted the Bush administration's earlier lunar exploration initiative and directed a generic focus on crewed missions to asteroids and Mars, as well as extending support for the International Space Station.

In 2019 President Trump had called for a crewed Moon mission in 2024 to be the focus of NASA instead of 2028 as in the original timetable. A plan for a 2024 landing was submitted to Congress August 2019 but has failed to get funding and plans agreed. Nsae Comp (talk) 15:20, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Commercial exploration.
The commercial exploration section currently includes the following sentence:

“In August 2016, the US government granted permission to US-based start-up Moon Express to land on the Moon.”

What the the hell?? Where does the US government get the arrogance that they have any legal authority over the moon and thus need to give such a permission. No-one owns the moon. The legal status of the moon does not include anything giving them such status. Is the source supporting that sentence even reliable??Tvx1 11:28, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Cold War Science
— Assignment last updated by Lukebbaldwin (talk) 21:34, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Update?
This page could use an update with the Artemis program in full swing. It links over to the page, but doesn't mention that Artemis 1 has already flown. The CLPS program is also happening now, with IM1 having launched earlier this year, but the article doesn't mention this. The first (semi)successful commercial landing on the moon feels notable. 128.149.245.16 (talk) 05:37, 16 July 2024 (UTC)