Men have reached for the moon for centuries. In the second century AD, the Syrian writer, Lucian of Samosata, told of a ship caught in a waterspout, lifted higher and higher into the sky until it finally comes to rest upon the moon.
In 1638, an English clergyman called Francis Godwin was even more inventive: his book, Man in the Moone, tells of a flock of large geese who migrate annually to the moon and who are harnessed by the hero to a chariot so that he can also make the journey.
Some 12 years later, in 1650, Cyrano de Bergerac's Voyage to the Moon listed seven different ways by which that objective might be achieved. And in the 19th century, Jules Verne exploited one of them to the full when he described how the first lunar visitor would be launched from a giant cannon.
By way of an alternative, the eponymous hero of Edgar Allen Poe's The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall, written in the 1830s, made the journey by ascending in a balloon.
Hans Pfaall's account was very interesting, even if ridiculous in the light of what we know today. "I have much to say about the climate of the planet," Poe has him report. "About its wonderful alternation of heat and cold, with unmitigated and burning sunshine for one fortnight and more than polar frigidity for the next, and about the people, their ugliness, and their want of ears, these being useless appendages in an atmosphere so peculiarly modified."
On July 20th, 1969, we received first-hand information about our nearest neighbour when Neil Armstrong descended to the lunar surface, declaring unforgettably to a waiting world: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
One of the most striking aspects of the lunar panorama must have been the extreme darkness of the sky. The moon has no atmosphere, so the scattering of certain wavelengths of sunlight, which gives us here on earth a bright, blue sky, does not take place. The lunar sky is dominated by the giant earth and the white sun, both shining brilliantly in sharp contrast to their jet-black background.
Neither is there any weather. Indeed, the planet, if one can call it such, is totally dead. Much of its surface is covered in a fine, powdery dust and there is no trace of water to be found, nor any indication that it has ever been there. There is no sign of life whatsoever, or of any chemicals which might relate to life.