Interesting facts & figures about the Moon

The landing on the moon took place forty years ago yesterday, on 20 July 1969. Here are some interesting facts and figures about the Earth’s satellite.

• The Astronauts had to back up their computer-guided navigation system by making star sightings with a sextant, much like Captain Cook and other 18th-century mariners before them.
• A present day household washing machine now has greater memory, more sophisticated programming and faster processing power than the entire sum of NASA’s computing resources at the time of the Moon landing.
• The distance between the Earth and its moon averages about 384,000 km. (Armchair explorers can visit the Moon by downloading Google Earth 5.0. You can find Moon in Google Earth by clicking the planet button, giving you options to switch between Earth, Mars, Sky and now Moon.)
• From measuring the ages of lunar rocks, it’s estimated that the moon is about 4.6 billion years old, or about the same age as the Earth. (Google Earth on the other hand is only 4 years old.)
• In high orbit, the difference between dark and sunlight is more than 200 °C, so if one side of the spacecraft got too hot, the electrical wiring that maintained the guidance system and the oxygen supply might collapse. This meant Apollo had to rotate at intervals all the way to the Moon and back!


Flag video - the Apollo 11

• The first leap in lunar observation began with the invention of the telescope, which Galileo Galilei used to observe mountains and craters on the Moon’s surface. In Google Moon you can discover Apollo-era geologic and topographic maps of the Moon that were used at mission control for planning trips to the Moon.
• This isn’t the first venture into space for Google — back in September 2007, Google released an earlier 2D version of Moon. Within Google Earth you can also find Google Mars and Google Sky!
• Only 24 people have been lucky enough to see our whole planet from Space, but you can enjoy this view anytime using Google Earth — it has been downloaded 500 million times!


The Apennine Range

• More than 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies are visible in Google Sky — some of them have never been seen before by a human eye.
• You can even explore the stars on your mobile phone. In May this year we introduced the Sky Map for Android — point the phone at any part of the sky, and Sky Map gives you a specially constructed map telling you what stars, planets, and constellations you’re looking at.
• Space travelers have spent over 30,400 days (or a cumulative total of over 83 years) in space, including over 100 astronaut-days of spacewalks.
• The man with the longest time in space is Sergei K. Krikalev, who has spent 803 days, 9 hours, and 39 minutes, or 2.2 years.
• The term ‘astronaut’ derives from the Greek words ástron (ἄστρον), meaning ‘star,’ and nautes (ναύτης), meaning ‘sailor.’
• Google Earth already contains a NASA layer, which showcases some of the best of photos from the online Astronaut Photography collection and some of the most interesting earth imagery taken by NASA satellites over the years.
• Google is happy to have its very own former NASA Astronaut, Ed Lu, who leads a team of Google engineers working on the Google PowerMeter. The Google PowerMeter analyzes energy consumption data captured by ‘smart meters’ and translates that into easy-to-understand information so people see where they can reduce energy use. On the spacecraft, Ed had to monitor its energy use closely and shut things down immediately after they were no longer needed.
• Laika (from the Russian: Лайка, literally meaning ‘Barker’ or ‘Howler’) was a Soviet space dog (c. 1954-November 3, 1957) who became the first living mammal to orbit the Earth. He also became the first orbital casualty :-(.
• Armstrong’s historic statement actually sounded like “That’s one small step for man …ah… one giant leap for mankind.” Neil has always claimed he said “a man” but the “a” was lost in transmission.
• “Moon” was Buzz Aldrin‘s (second man on the moon) mother’s maiden name.
• The engines had a thrust equal to 92,000 locomotives. When the hold down clamps released, all 3,000 tons of the rocket lifted up off the ground. People could hear, see, and even feel Apollo 11 taking off. The engines caused a shock wave that could be felt for miles around. Two and a half minutes later, Apollo 11 was moving 9,000 feet per second. At this speed, you could go from Los Angeles to New York in only 24 minutes!
• The mass of the Moon is about one-eightieth of the Earth’s mass.