Moon and The Lunar Explorations

1. The moon keeps nearly the same face towards the earth. We can see around 59 % of moons surface from earth.
2. The moon is the only celestial body on which humans have landed.
   
3. The First man made object to land on moon was not Apollo 11, (which of course was the first vehicle to carry human to moon, on July 20, 1969; marked by first person Neil Armstrong to land on moon) but it was unmanned Soviet probe Luna 2, on September 14, 1959. Luna 2 made a hard landing on the moon surface.
4. The first (again unmanned) probe to photograph the far side of the moon was Luna 3, on October 7 1959.
5. Luna 9, another unmanned Soviet probe, on February 3, 1966, was the second artificial object to reach moon surface and was the first probe to soft land on the Moon and transmit pictures from the Lunar surface.
6. The first artificial satellite of moon was again a soviet probe Luna 10, launched on March 31, 1966.
7. The first human being to see the far side of moon with their own eyes, on December 24 1968, were the Apollo 8 crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders.
8. The last man to stand on moon was Eugene Cernan, who was part of Apollo 17 mission. He walked on moon in December 1972.
9. From mid 1960's to mid 1970's there wer 65 moon landings.
10. In 1990, Japan became the third nation to orbit moon, with the Hiten spacecraft.
11. On September 27, 2003, a Swedish designed European space agency satellite, SMART-1, was launched to orbit around the moon. On September 3, 2006, SMART-1 was deliberately crashed on moon's surface, ending its mission.SMART-1 measured just 1 meters across and weighed 367 kg.