[music playing]
- Some planets have many moons, and others have none.
But Earth has one, and it's amazing.
[music playing]
kids: "Our World." [laughter]
- The Moon is the brightest object in the sky
after the Sun, and it plays a big role
in patterns we see here on Earth.
Did you know that our Moon is the reason for tides?
- That's right, a tide is another word for
"gravitational pull."
The Moon pulls on the Earth,
but the Earth also pulls tides on the Moon.
When the water is in motion,
it moves towards the Moon, and that gives us a tide.
The tide also is important for the Earth
because it moves water around.
When water moves around nutrients move around,
and a lot of animals and even humans
depend on having tides.
A lot of us also depend on moonlight
for navigating at night.
It provides light in our night sky.
So there's a lot of reasons
that we like to have the Moon around.
- Cool.
The Moon really does have a big effect on Earth.
But how do we know so much about our moon?
- Well, people have always looked at the Moon
in wonder in our night sky.
It's so bright and it's so close,
and we'd like to know more about
what it's made out of and how it got to be there.
So NASA develops missions to the Moon
and to other planets to understand
how we all work together as a solar system.
NASA has been sending missions to the Moon
since the 1960s,
starting with robotic missions
and building to human missions.
We sent humans to the Moon with the Apollo missions
to pick up rocks to bring back to the Earth
and to learn about the Moon's environment.
Since then, we've been sending robotic missions
like LRO and LCROSS and LADEE
that have helped us map the surface of the Moon.
We have maps that show us the surface features,
the craters and the lava flows.
We have maps of temperature.
We have maps of the gravity of the Moon.
And all of those things help us understand
what the Moon is made out of.
It turns out the Moon is not dry.
It has water on it, actually,
but the water is frozen.
The water is frozen at the north and south pole
in deep craters that are permanently shadowed.
They never receive any sunlight,
so they don't ever heat up.
And that water can stay frozen
for billions of years.
We hope someday to be able to go to that water
and extract it and use it to live on the Moon.
Even though we know a lot about the Moon,
there's still so much more we want to learn.
We'd like to be able to send landers there
and rovers, just like we do for Mars.
- So as long as we have questions about the Moon,
NASA will keep planning missions
to answer those questions,
because the Moon is pretty important to our world.
I'm Mishay. I'll see you next time.
[music playing]
kids: "Our World." [laughter]