The Moon is very different to the Earth. The Moon is not a planet either! It is made of rock and it moves around the Earth in a circle. Remember how we spoke about the planets which orbit the Sun. The Moon does the same thing - it orbits around the Earth.

Moon facts:

• The Moon is 384 000 kilometres from Earth.
• The Moon is made of rock and the surface is rock and grey sand.
• The Moon has no air and no water.
• The Moon is smaller than the Earth.
• People weigh less on the Moon than on Earth because the force of gravity is less on the Moon.
• The Sun is much further away from Earth than the Moon.

In 1969, the rocket you see in the picture carried three men to the Moon for the first time. The rocket and spacecraft were called Apollo 11.

The flame at the back is the hot gases coming out of the nozzle. The clouds on the side of the picture are the gases that hit the ground and blow dust sideways. The three men were called astronauts. They were in a small spacecraft on the nose of the rocket.

The big rocket burned up all its fuel and fell back to Earth, and landed in the sea. But the small spacecraft went on by itself to the Moon, and the astronauts were inside the spacecraft.

Let us imagine that we are in that rocket!

We travel through Space at 5 800 kilometres in every hour. After three days' travel, we reach the Moon. We can see that the Moon is round, like a ball. We can see that the surface is rough, with mountains and many craters.

The surface is the outside of an object. You can rub your hand on the surface of your desk. A crater is a hole that was caused by something hitting a surface. If you throw a stone into sand, you make a crater in the sand.

Read this story, or listen while your teacher reads it aloud:

The spacecraft goes down slowly to the Moon's surface, blowing out a big cloud of dust. There is no air on the Moon, and so the dust quickly falls back to the ground. We put on our spacesuits. We have air in tanks to breathe, radios to talk to each other and special glass helmets to protect our eyes from the Sun.

The ground under our feet is grey sand, dust and small rocks.

The craters that we saw are big holes in the surface of the Moon. Rocks that travel very fast through Space sometimes smash into the Moon. In the places where the rocks hit, they make a hole and a ring of sand.

The sky is black, not blue. We can see the stars and the Sun at the same time. The Sun is bright, much brighter than on Earth, and we are glad we have protective glass in our helmets.

As we walk around on the Moon, the temperature of the ground is hotter than boiling water. But if we stop in the shade of a big rock or the spacecraft, the temperature is much colder than ice. The temperature changes so much because the Moon has no air. On Earth, the air keeps the Earth's surface from getting too hot or too cold.

The Sun shines on the Moon but there is always a part of the Moon that the Sun cannot reach. We can see the part that has sunlight on it, but we cannot see the dark part that is in shadow.

The hare and the Moon met at a waterhole one night. The hare washed his face with water. The water became still, like a mirror. He saw himself in the water and then he saw that the Moon was more beautiful than he was.

So the hare took mud from the side of the pool and he threw it on the Moon's face. You can still see the mud on the face of the Moon, if you look at the Moon tonight.

Once upon a time the Sun and the Moon were married and they had many children known as Stars.

The Sun was very fond of his children and he always wanted to hold them. But he was very hot and so the stars got burnt.

The stars did not like to be burnt and so they always ran away to hide when he came up into the sky. But the stars liked to be with their mother, the Moon, because she was the cool one. The Moon had markings on her face and she was beautiful.

This made the Sun very jealous, and he was angry with the Moon. So that is the reason why the Sun chases the Moon out of the sky. On some days you can see her in the daytime but the Sun almost never catches her.

There are times when the Moon comes between the Sun and the Earth, and we see the Sun go dark. These events are called eclipses of the Sun.