When the Moon Hits Your Eye

The Moon was one of the first celestial objects to be telescopically described and tracked. Hence, its no surprise either that, nearly four centuries later, the Moon became the first destination of the US-Soviet space race. As President John F. Kennedy had hoped, Americans--specifically the Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin--became the first people to set foot on the Moon, on Jul 20, 1969. A full decade earlier, the Soviet Union had become the first nation to land a spacecraft on the Moon and the first to photograph the Moon's far side--which is why many surface features on the far side have names like Mare Moscoviense and Gagarin crater.