Introduction to Space Exploration - Aiming For Dry Seas

Suddenly all eyes were on the Moon. Earth's closest neighbor had been a subject of fascination since the first humans gazed up at the night sky.

Most of the features on the Moon were named during the 1600s by an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Riccioli (1598–1671). Riccioli was a Jesuit priest, a member of the Roman Catholic order the Society of Jesus, which is devoted to missionary and educational work. At the request of the church Riccioli devoted his life to astronomy and telescopic studies. At the time the writings of Kepler and Copernicus were popular and controversial. In keeping with church doctrine, Riccioli disputed Copernicus's claim that the Earth was not the center of the universe.

Despite this gross error Riccioli's work proved very useful to later scientists. He published a detailed lunar map that he developed with fellow Jesuit and Italian physicist Francesco Grimaldi (1613–63). This map featured Latin names for lunar features. Elevations and depressions were named after famous astronomers and philosophers. Large, dark, flat areas that looked like bodies of water were named Oceans or Seas.

Four hundred years later humans on opposite sides of Earth took aim at these features. During the early and mid-1960s NASA and the Soviets sent dozens of photographic probes to take pictures of the Moon. Some probes proved successful, and some did not. Four NASA probes crashed into the Moon, but they had beamed back valuable photographs before impacting the lunar surface. In 1966 the Soviet probe Luna 9 softly set down in the Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms), the largest of the lunar "seas." Four months later NASA's Surveyor 1 probe landed nearby.

Both countries needed lunar data to support their efforts to send humans to the Moon. During this time Soviet officials did not even acknowledge that they had a manned lunar program. Those in the U.S. program suspected that they did but could not be sure. It was not until years later, when Sergei Leskov recounted the story in "How We Didn't Get to the Moon" in the Russian publication Izvestiya (August 18, 1989) that the United States learned how badly the Soviets had tried to beat them to the Moon.