Earth’s Moon

Chapter 9 Section 3
The Structure and
Origin of the Moon
• Moon’s diameter is a little
less than the distance
across the United States
• Collision Theory- Large object
collided with Earth and
threw materials from
Earth’s outer layer into
orbit around Earth

 Looking at the Moon from
Earth
 Telescope- device that makes distant
objects appear closer made by
putting two lenses in a wooden tube
 Features on the moon’s surface that
can be seen with a telescope include
craters, highlands, and maria
 Craters- round pits covering much of
the moon’s surface made by impacts
of meteoroids, rocks from space
 Highlands- mountains on the moon
 Maria- dark, flat areas on the moon’s
surface
 Missions to the Moon

 In the mid-1960s the Soviet Union and the

United States began the space race by
sending dozens of rockets to explore the
moon.
 Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969 and
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped foot
on the moon
 Armstrong said ‘That’s one small step for man,
and one giant leap for mankind.’
 Much of what scientists learned about the
moon came from detailed study of the moon
rocks gathered by astronauts
 Moon rocks were almost all formed from molten
material, indicating the moon must have
once been very hot
 Photographs of the
Moon
• Apollo astronauts circled the
moon and photographed its
surface
• Clementine spacecraft went to
the moon and discovered
what types of minerals are
on the moon
• Lunar Prospector spacecraft
mapped the entire moon
and found evidence of ice
frozen into lunar soil

 Review
• Name the 3 kinds of features that Galilieo
saw on the moon’s surface


• What did the Apollo astronauts do on the

moon?


• How did the craters form on the moon?



• Why did scientists once think there were

volcanoes on the moon? What evidence
from the Apollo landings makes this
unlikely?