Moon 2.0

NASA is planning a crewed Moon landing in 2027, while the China National Space Administration (CNSA) aims to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030. India, too, has announced plans to send a person to the Moon by 2040.

This renewed interest in our closest celestial neighbor suggests that the lunar surface will soon be home to even more human-made objects. Currently, nearly 1,000 items from Earth litter the Moon. The publication NZZ, in its feature The Fate of Human-Made Objects on the Moon, uses an interactive 3D Moon globe to map the debris left on the lunar surface since the dawn of space exploration. Ever since the Soviet Union's Luna 2 became the first man-made object to reach the Moon, items such as golf balls and even astronaut waste have been abandoned on the lunar surface. The NZZ interactive globe highlights the nearly 100 locations on the Moon where these human-made objects can be found.

The diversity of human artifacts on the Moon ranges from scientific equipment to personal mementos. The U.S. Apollo missions, for example, left behind objects as varied as lunar rovers and dollar bills. NASA even left the ashes of Gene Shoemaker, a prominent geologist, on the lunar surface. According to NZZ, there are now, in total, more than 200 tons of human-made debris on the Moon.

You can learn more about the Moon on Bartosz Ciechanowski's amazing Moon visualization. This informative article about the Moon includes a superb interactive 3D globe which shows the phases of the moon by date (controlled using a sliding date control).

Another interactive feature allows you to track the current position of the Moon in the sky. With two slide controls—one for adjusting the date and another for the hour of the day - you can explore how the Moon’s position changes over time. By sharing your location with the map, you can determine the Moon’s exact position in the night sky from your location at any given hour on any given date.

A series of visualizations further illustrate the Moon’s motion and the role of gravity in space. From Earth, the Moon appears to wobble slightly over time, a phenomenon explained through Ciechanowski's engaging animations. Additional illustrations delve into how gravity influences moving bodies, showing how the force of gravity depends on the masses of the objects and the distance between them.

Via: Webcurios