Behind each of these dates is a story. A story told by our truthiness expert Chuck the Squirrel. He'd like to share a few words with you so please feel free to dig into our Warped Timeline of Lunar Exploration. We won't call it edutainment because only people we hate use that awful term.

Enjoy!

In positively prehistoric times, people looked up at the Moon and said, "Would you look at that brilliant object that changes shape in a regular cyclical pattern?"

The Moon was critical to pre-historic cultures around the world as a timekeeping calendar.

We do know that early Egyptians (and maybe the neolithic people who built Stonehenge) used the Moon's changing phases as a monthly calendar to keep track of the seasons. Moon phases are still used for the Islamic, Christian, and Jewish calendars; for instance, Easter is the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after spring equinox.

Well, before 1,000 BC, anyway, many Asian cultures worshipped the Moon (as did pretty much everyone else at the time), and created an annual mid-autumn festival. This tradition is centered around the story of Chang'e, a woman who floated up to live on the Moon. Festival customs include eating mooncakes.

Many ancient cultures associated the Moon with fertility -- for instance, before becoming the Greek virgin goddess of the hunt, a 7th century BC version of Artemis was the Moon "Mother" goddess of fertility.

These various fertile Moon goddesses were also called upon (or blamed) for childbirth. But despite the stories you've heard from your friend's sister's cousin who changes light bulbs at the hospital, the full Moon is in no way correlated with a freakishly high number of babies being born. Extensive scientific investigation3 also debunks the theory that there are more animals biting people during a full Moon.

In the 2nd century BC, Hipparchus - an ancient Greek astronomer -- used observations of a solar eclipse documented in two cities to triangulate the distance to the Moon.

Hipparchus' estimate was close; and he later refined it to a more accurate value of 61 times the Earth's radius.

According to legend, in the 15th -16th centuries a Chinese official named Wan Hu strapped 47 rockets to a chair, wanting to go to the Moon.

This may in fact be a modern legend masquerading as an ancient story, but we decided to include it.

Galileo Galilei observed the Moon with a telescope and in 1610 wrote about the hills and deep valleys he saw on its surface, and suggested that the large dark areas were smooth and possibly oceans. This was one of the first pieces of evidence that objects in space might not be perfect … rocking the foundation of the traditional views of the Universe.

Galileo widely shared his findings. Actually Thomas Harriot saw and drew telescopic observations of the Moon first, but never published them.

Later astronomers (dudes such as Hevelius, Beer, and Schmidt) created detailed illustrations and photographs of the Moon's front side. Most astronomers actually find the Moon's presence in the sky to be profoundly annoying--making it difficult to observe fainter celestial objects.

After debunking Galileo's ocean theory, scientists debated just what the heck the circular features on the Moon were. In 1667, Robert Hooke suggested the Moon's craters formed when enormous bubbles in lava burst. Later scientists agreed that the craters were formed by volcanos.

By the 1870's, a few scientists suggested that the round features on the Moon might be made by asteroid impacts. In 1969, the rocks returned by the Apollo missions were shown to include shattered and partially melted crystals, from the tremendous heat and pressure of impacts.

Faced with the hideous prospect of having nothing to argue about, scientists rapidly turned to debating whether most of the impacts were made by asteroids or comets.

So why on Earth should we care about the Moon's craters? Well, in part because they aren't on Earth; Earth's dastardly geologic processes continually wear away its rocks, and with them, the craters. The Moon has been geologically inactive for billions of years. Its well-preserved ancient crust and its craters tell scientists the history of Earth and the early solar system. More here.

18th century tall tales by Baron Munchhausen include trips to the Moon, where the Moon is ruled by a divided maniacal leader, whose head has abandoned his body for more celestial pursuits.

Beethoven completes the Piano Sonata No. 14 in C minor "Quasi una fantasia", Op. 27, No. 2, later renamed the Moonlight Sonata by music critic Ludwig Rellstab who compared it to moonlight shining upon Lake Lucerne.

In 1865, Jules Verne wrote "From the Earth to the Moon" in which three men build an enormous space gun and launch themselves to the Moon.

Ya gotta see the French movie Le Voyage dans la Lune based loosely on Verne's book and another by HG Wells.

The beloved children's story, Goodnight Moon, was penned by Margaret Wise Brown to coax small children to go to sleep by repeating tedious "good nights" to inanimate objects, thus allowing their weary parents to get a few minutes of peace and quiet...

The USSR startled the world by launching Sputnik, the first satellite, into Earth orbit in 1957. In retaliation the United States launched its own satellite (Explorer I) AND created a new agency - NASA.

This was the starting shot of the space race, a competition between the Soviet Union and the United States to see who could walk on the Moon first

Fleets of unmanned probes from the Soviet Union and the United States were sent to the Moon between 1959 and 1976, studying its gravity, temperature, magnetic fields, radiation, and more.

There are now hundreds of thousands of objects orbiting Earth; ranging from satellites to loose screws.

Because the Moon rotates at the same rate that it orbits the Earth, we only see one side. The first image of the Moon's backside ever was taken by Luna 3 in 1959; until then, no one had ever seen the far side.

On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy addressed Congress, announcing a national goal of sending a man safely to the Moon. 16 months later, Kennedy motivated Americans during a speech at Rice University, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,..." Check it out.

When first elected, Kennedy was concerned by the finances of planning human missions to the Moon. Between 1960 and 1974, NASA's budget averaged about 2.3% of the federal budget, with a high in 1966 of 5.5% (~35 billion dollars adjusted for 2007 dollars).

Beginning in 1962, NASA's Mercury and Gemini programs studied how to launch and keep the astronauts alive for several days while in orbit, how to rendezvous and dock with other spacecraft, how to move about outside of the spacecraft, and how to land safely on Earth.

These were followed by the Apollo Program (1961 until 1975) which focused on sending astronauts to orbit, land on, and explore the Moon.

While wireless headphones and microphones were invented earlier, the first headsets were created for and worn by the astronauts in 1962.

While international pressures jump-started the Apollo missions, really cool and useful stuff resulted -- like cordless power tools, water filters, and foam insulation.

While the song was written in 1954, Frank Sinatra recorded his famous version in 1964. Astronauts on both Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 chose to play Sinatra's recording.

Piere Boulle, author of Planet of the Apes and The Bridge Over the River Kwai, publishes Garden on the Moon. This fictional telling of the space race ends with Japan landing the first man on the Moon.

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the Moon. The initial Soviet reaction was that if they could not be first, they could still be best. Unfortunately, faced with a variety of challenges, they never were able to successfully land a man on the Moon.

The six Apollo landings which took place between 1969 and 1972, fulfilled the goals of establishing the United States' preeminence in space. Apollo also initiated scientific exploration of the Moon and began to develop and test the human capacity to work in the lunar environment.

During Apollo 11's mission, Pink Floyd was inspired to perform "Moonhead" in a live broadcast. In 1972, Pink Floyd recorded their most successful album, "The Dark Side of the Moon," with uplifting themes such as conflict, greed, and mental illness.

The Moon in fact has no permanently dark side, just a far side.

Apollo Experiments studied the Moon's surface and environment, lunar quakes, the solar wind, and the Moon's magnetic field. Among other experiments, the astronauts deployed a laser reflector; measurements using it have shown that the Moon is moving away from Earth about 1.5 inches a year. Which means Earth is slowing down. Which means days are getting longer.

The Apollo landings provided scientists with huge amounts of lunar data in the form of photography and orbital experiment results, sample collections and surface operations. Altogether, the Apollo missions returned 842 pounds of lunar rock and soil.

Budget constraints ended the Apollo program in 1972. NASA's budget returned to 1% or less of the federal budget. Which is still a lot of money.

One of the most widely distributed photographic images, this was the first clear image of an illuminated Earth. Taken by the crew of Apollo 17, the photo has been used to depict Earth's frail vulnerability, and became the poster-child for Earth Day.

Prior to the mid 1970's, competing hypotheses had the Moon forming by being "spun" off the Earth, Earth capturing a wandering Moon, Earth and Moon being "born" at the same time, in the same place. All of these theories had flaws. A new theory proposed that the Moon formed from the debris created by a collision between early Earth and smaller planetary body.

By 1984, enough data - in a large part provided by the Apollo rocks - existed for this theory that it replaced the earlier theories. Scientists still have unanswered questions and continue to test their findings against this model, so stay tuned for further tweaking!

In 1979, The Police released "Walking on the Moon," filmed at the Kennedy Space Center. It appears to be about the reduced gravity on the Moon's surface (which allowed astronauts to jump high in spite of heavy spacesuits), but was actually about the feeling of being in love.

A Grand Day Out: Wallace and Gromit travel to the Moon in a really cushy rocket, to have a picnic that includes lunar cheese.

The first evidence of water on the Moon came from the 1994 Clementine mission's radar observations of permanently dark craters near the Moon's south pole, suggesting icy surfaces. In 1998, NASA launched the Lunar Prospector to map the Moon's poles, gravity, and to search for ice deposits; data collected by Prospector suggested the Moon may have water ice.

Japan's 2007 Kaguya probe didn't find any signs of water ice at the poles, but in 2009, India's Chandrayaan-1 conclusively detected water on the Moon's surface! Its findings were confirmed by the NASA LCROSS mission in 2009 when the spacecraft impacted a polar crater, sending up a plume of ejecta that was analyzed by spectrometers aboard the shepherding spacecraft, LRO, and in telescopes on Earth.

Scientists, left with nothing to argue about, turned quickly to hotly debating the source and history of this water.

Water on the Moon may serve as a valuable resource to any future human stations on the Moon, removing the need to ship tons of water to the Moon.

Data from computer models suggest that some of the planets, and asteroids and planets have migrated, and even swapped places. The data suggestions that about 3.8 billion years ago the inner planets and moons, were bombarded, by comets or asteroids flung in by migrating planets. In some models, Jupiter migrated, but there are actually many different scenarios.

The debate continues, more samples from the Moon may hold the key to the answer to this interplanetary game of muiscal chairs.

In response to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, and as a way to regain public enthusiasm for space exploration, President Bush announced a new Vision for Space Exploration, which would serve national scientific, security and economic interests. The VSE (yes, you are in NASA-acronym-land, or NAL) proposed to return astronauts to the Moon no later than 2020, in part, in preparation for further space exploration beyond the Moon.

NASA turned again to the Moon with a budget that was about half that of the Apollo days (in 2007 equivalent dollars) and the charge to "pay as you go."

Driven by the quest for scientific knowledge, the search for economic benefits...or just plain ol' competition, 2007 to 2009 saw a flurry of activity as China, Japan, India, and the United States each launched a robotic mission to orbit and study the Moon.

NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009 (it is currently in orbit around the Moon) to collect detailed information about the lunar environment in preparation for future exploration. LRO has captured some truly amazing images, including trails left by the Apollo astronauts on moonwalks.

As NASA struggled with balancing incremental steps in space exploration with an end goal of "to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond," it became apparent that the exploration infrastructure (things like rockets) would cost more money than NASA had in its future budget - about 0.6% of the total federal budget.

NASA needed a course correction or a budget adjustment. In 2009 the Augustine Commission suggested NASA either explore "flexible" paths to get to Mars or get a budget hike from Congress. This ushered in yet another period of fist-fights and name calling among the pro-Moon, pro-asteroids, pro-Mars factions.

In spite of statements by talk show hosts who shall remain nameless, NASA's cratering experiment on October 9, 2009 was not about "bombing the moon" -- it was about analyzing the materials in permanently shadowed craters at the Moon's south pole to see if water ice existed in these super cold places.

The experiment didn't create much visible debris, but did provide scientists with detailed spectra that enabled them to identify the fingerprints of water.

Mix a lonely helium-3 miner on the Moon and a talking computer named "Gerty" that sounds like Kevin Spacey and what do you get? The movie Moon. Released in 2009, Moon was directed by Duncan Jones, the son of rock icon David Bowie.

In February 2010, President Obama proposed to cancel the Constellation program that would return humans to the Moon. No replacement human destination has been officially determined at this point in time. The proposed NASA budget includes funds for continued robotic missions to the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and more, to identify hazards and resources for future human exploration.

Proponents of human space exploration point out that our nation needs a space exploration program to maintain our global economic and technological edge and that advancing humans across the solar system and beyond is our only real strategy for survival as a species.

Pro-asteroid factions clammer that understanding Near Earth Objects (NEO) better will help us prepare for possible future asteroid impacts on Earth - and there may be some nifty resources on asteroids.

Pro-Moon tribes counter that the Moon is a much closer, safer target to learn about living in space, and it has plenty of information about asteroids on its surface.

Current plans still include missions to orbit and study the Moon. GRAIL is due to launch in Sept. 2011, to study the Moon's interior, and LADEE should launch in 2012, to study the Moon's very thin atmosphere and dust, caused by the constant sand-blasting of solar particles.

As scientists better understand the Moon's properties and its history, they will be able to apply that knowledge to Earth's own history, and to our solar system.

Will a New Moon rise? Stay tuned!