Our interaction with the moon over human history mirrors technological advances that we've made here on the earth.

The first observations of the moon, the ancients, when they looked up and saw light and dark areas,

that was the very first scientific observation, because just to see that there are differences there,

tells you something happened. Then the invention of the telescope and the advancement of telescopes that lets you look

closer. And then we get to the space age and we send our first rockets. And then we send Apollo

and we send astronauts to the surface. In that very, very narrow window of time,

our complete understanding of Earth's history,

of the Moon's history, of solar system's history,

transformed.

And I expect that with this next era of lunar expiration,

that we'll have similar fundamental revisions

in our understanding of how things work. This is NASA's curious universe.

Our universe is a wild and wonderful place.

I'm your host, Patty Boyd, and in this podcast, NASA is your tour guide.

Most of what we know about our universe, we've learned through data and imagery from spacefaring technology or ground-based telescopes.

But there's one planetary body, humans have had the

chance to study from the surface. The Moon.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for man's time.

The Moon is our closest celestial friend, staying nearby in our Earth's orbit and impacting

life here in so many ways. When it's visible, it's the brightest object in the night sky.

And for as long as humans have looked up, it's captivated our imaginations.

So let's explore the Moon. What we've learned over

...