Remembering Thirty-six Years Of Interplanetary Travel (July 20, 2005)

[ChrisReid]

Today is the 36th anniversary of the first moon landing. To celebrate, Google added a bit of NASA footage to its maps database. Check out the feature here, and don't forget to zoom in. If you're looking for something a bit more terrestrial, check out a satellite Google shot of where Dragon*Con is held.

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Original update published on July 20, 2005

 

[Unregistered]

No mean to be a smart-ass but our moon is no planet.

 

[ChrisReid]

I guess the new ability for unregistered people to post in the News forum works.

It's bigger than an asteroid, it's not a comet, and it circles the sun, so I referred to it as a planet. Isn't the moon bigger than Pluto? I know people argue about Pluto not being a planet too. I don't much care for a semantics discussion right now though.

 

[Ptarmigan]

No mean to be a smart-ass but our moon is no planet.

Our Moon is 2,170 miles in diameter. It is larger than the planet Pluto, which is 1,400 miles in diameter. The Moon by itself qualifies as a planet.

 

[Pedro]

Technically the moon just revolves around the earth, which just so happens to revolve around our sun... depending on what sources you goto pre-requisites are related to both its size (which the moon meets) and its orbiting a star which is open to debate (well its probably not but I'm not prepared to say if it is or is not).

I must admit refferring to moons as planets seems rather odd as they are defined of natural satellites around a planet, whether or not its technically correct.

 

[ChrisReid]

I'm sure there are dictionaries that will define it both ways. In this case, "interplanetary" is simply a nice sounding way of saying from Earth to the moon.

 

[RAT]

Hi all
At first - my congratiulations to all fore real BIG step of mankind.
At second - The Moon jast a "moon" like Io, Ganimede, Europe, Fobos, Deymos. No planet-its no have personal orbit about stellar. No comet, no "vanderer" planet. Its is earch satelite. Jast moon.

 

[Unregistered]

Wow, didn't know I'd start a thing with this...
Some people believe the Moon is actually part of Earth. During the violent times when our solar system formed, a huge cellestial body supposingly hit our planet, and broke a huge chunk of it. As time went on by, the debris, thanks to gravity, formed into our Moon.
Pluto and Charon(?) are just asteroids that revolve around eachother, similar to binary star systems.
As for the term 'interplanetary', the best I can think of is 'extra-terrestial'.