The Moon has been an object of fascination for as long as humanity has been gazing up at the heavens. Its proximity is such that our closest celestial neighbour not only seems to dominate the night sky, but also appears to be tantalisingly close.
It’s not, though. At the closest point in its elliptical orbit, the Moon lies more than 350,000km (over 220,000 miles) from Earth. It was only truly brought within our reach in the last 60 years.
Humans have landed on the Moon six times, all during NASA’s Apollo programme, which ran from 1969 to 1972. Each of those missions was brief, lasting no more than a few days.
It has been over half a century since anyone set foot on the lunar surface. But in the next few years, that could all be about to change.
The US and China have set targets to return to the lunar surface with missions that, initially, will last days, but later, weeks, and will hopefully lead to both nations establishing permanent bases on the Moon, giving us a continuous human presence on another world.
