The moon is Earth’s closest neighbor in space, and it travels around Earth. The distance between Earth and the moon is one quarter of a million miles away. There are light and dark places on the moon. The light places are mountains and hills, and the dark places are flatlands. Many craters cover the moon’s surface. The moon's composition is rock. On the moon, no air, no wind, and no water, so snow does not fall, thunder never rolls and no clouds form in the black sky. On the moon, the temperature is very different during the day and night. This planet has no life and we call it “a dead world”.
But people have never stopped exploring the moon. In 1961, The United States government tried to send a person to the moon to explore the moon. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first human on the moon. The last spaceship is Apollo 17 and it was launched in Dec. 1972. It's been 50 years since humans last walked on the Moon. Now, NASA is preparing to return. They started the Artemis Program. One Artemis mission has already been completed: in late 2022 Artemis 1, an uncrewed test flight, orbited and flew beyond the Moon. Now returning to the moon in the future is not a dream again.
There are many differences between Earth and the moon. Earth is a “ life planet”, but the moon is a “dead world”. The Apollo's astronauts brought back the moon’s soil and rocks for scientists to study. Scientists notice that the moon’s rocks contain no water but Earth’s rocks contain a small amount of water. No water means no oxygen to breathe and no hydrogen for fuel. This means there couldn’t be living things on the moon, so it is a hard thing for humans to live on the moon.
However, the moon is a treasure trove of science. We brought back more information about the moon during the past landed missions. Scientists have already done many studies about the moon. But we want to get more. We want to learn how humans can survive and thrive on the moon, we want to learn how to utilize the resources we find on the moon, we want to learn how to find water ice and purify it to drinkable water, refining that into hydrogen for fuel and oxygen to breed. All of the missions aren't simple or easy. We want to explore Mars and the moon is our first and monumental step.
In conclusion, landing on the moon is not a simple or easy thing. It needs a huge cost, plenty of time, a lot of scientist's effort, cooperation between the countries, cooperation between the company and country, etc. The Moon is like a museum of the history of the solar system. Landing on the moon will help us to improve our knowledge of the geology of the Moon and Earth as well as the history of the solar system. Most of all, landing on the moon will inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, astronauts, and children who love science.
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