Humanity’s early history  with the moon

Our relationship with the moon has existed since the first homosapians emerged millions of years ago. Undoublety those early humans envisioned themselves stepping foot on the big bright sphere in the sky. A goal that was eventually achieved, but it took quite a while to get there, so let’s take a look at some of the major milestones it took to reach the moon. 

 1609: Thomas Harriet with the newly invented telescope mapped and sketched the moon’s surface. 

1840: the very first photograph of the moon was taken 

1903: the Wright brothers invent the first airplane.

1944: The German V-2  test rocket reaches outer space.

1957: Soviet space dog Laika  is the first animal to orbit the earth.

1958: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was founded.

1961: Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin completes a 108 minute flight in space aboard Vostok 1.

 1969: Apollo 11 lands successfully on the surface of the moon.

All of that brings us to today, as recently the crew of the spaceshuttle Artemis ll completed a 9 day orbit of the moon and landed safely back on earth.

This mission laid the groundwork for the Artemis III which will take flight next year and is set to become the first manned mission to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Crew of the Artemis ll | NASA

Prior to space travel, the moon remained somewhat of a mystery to humans for centuries, with plenty of wild misconceptions made about it.

“Before telescopes were invented, many early civilizations believed the Moon as well as everything else in the sky to be supernatural and that the moon was perfectly spherical,” said Nicholas Timmons, who is co-chair of astronomy at Saddleback College. 

Even though early humans did not fully understand the moon, it still played an important part in many early civilizations.

“The moon played a very important role in timekeeping for early civilizations,” Timmons said. “ The cycle of Moon phases formed the basis for our first calendars and is where we get the term mo(o)nth from, “By counting the changing phases, civilizations were able to predict the changing seasons. Some religious calendars are still based on the Moon’s phases and are called lunar calendars. 

While astronomers had been around since at least 1000 BCE. most of their observations were done with the naked eye, which limited their knowledge and discovery.

The invention of the telescope in 1608 however, opened up a whole new world for astronomers(literally)

“When Galileo Galilei first observed the Moon with a telescope in 1609, he found that it was not a perfect sphere and that it had some aspects that seemed similar to the Earth,” Timmons said.“This was a big deal because it was the first observational proof that the Moon was a natural object made of the same stuff the Earth is”

First photograph of the moon (1840) | John W. Draper

Other than that it was the closest to Earth, astronomers had other reasons to be so intrigued by the moon, and why they took observing it so seriously. 

The Moon holds a lot of information about the history of the solar system and the Earth itself,” Timmons said. “We believe that the Moon was formed from a portion of the top layer of the Earth after we were struck by a large object early in the Earth’s history. Studying the Moon’s surface and chemical composition can teach us a lot about our own Earth history.”

As we all know, people were unable to visit the moon or even reach space for at least another 300 years.

In that time, however, people came with their own fantasies about what a journey to the moon would be like.

“‘A Trip to the Moon’ released in 1902 and directed by George Melles was the first science fiction film,” Timmons said.” The stories of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, and later science fiction films, also inspired so many to see science and exploration as the adventure it is.” 

However in 1969 people didn’t have to fantasize anymore, as humans stepped foot on the moon for the first time, reaching a goal thousands of years in the making.

Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon (1969) | NASA

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