Map of the Moon & Moon Facts Poster

POSTERS

To celebrate the first Moon landing in 1969 and all the adventures that followed, we've created a printable map of the Moon poster for you to decorate kids rooms and learn interesting facts about the Moon & the Apollo 11 Mission. This lovely poster shows the Moon with names of the important craters and the location where Apollo 11 landed - the area where Buzz Aldrin left his boot print!

It also shows the diameter, weight of the moon and the distance from Earth. Scrawl down to read many interesting things about the Moon and you’ll have plenty of things to talk about while enjoying this map of the Moon poster.

Interesting Facts about the Moon

Lunar Craters

The moon is covered with craters everywhere. Crater means ‘vessel’ in Greek. Galieo found out about this first through his telescope in 1609. He observed that the moon has mountains and sunken areas with edges raised, like bowls – which he named ‘craters’. People later named each important crater – check out what some of them are called on the poster!

The Size and Weight of the Moon

The moon is 1/4 size of Earth and weighs 1/81 of Earth. This means the Moon’s density is low & therefore it’s gravity is much weaker than on Earth. The strength of the Moon’s gravity is about 1/6 of Earth. This means the Moon will not ‘pull’ you with so much strength, so if you jump on the moon, you’ll jump much higher and feel lighter (Woudn’t that be fun?!). You will also weigh 1/6 of your weight on Earth. (Doesn’t mean that you’ll actually lose any body fat!)

Isaac Newton first calculated the weight of the Moon in , pretty close to the current one – 81 Quintillion Tons (that is 18 zeros after 81).

How long does it take to go to the moon?

The distance from Earth to the Moon is 363,301 kilometers (225,745 miles). Apollo 11 took about 3 days to get there, 3 days to return . In 2006, NASA Pluto probe New Horizons only took 8 hours to go to the moon and back.

The Man on the Moon

Apollo 11‘s landing module ‘The Eagle’ landed in the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon on 20th July 1969. The commander Neil Amstrong was the first human who stepped onto the Moon, followed by Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin , while Michael Collins waited in the spacecraft to pick them up and take them home when they finished their mission. (Great collaboration!) Neil Amstrong famously said “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”.

They looked at the Earth faraway, put the flag of the USA on the Moon and took photos including the famous photo of the bootprint of Buzz Aldrin during their scientific tests, collected samples and did ‘rabbit jumps’ (as mentioned above it’s really fun to jump on the Moon).

The plaque they left on the moon says ” Here Men From The Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We Came in Peace For All Mankind.”

Check out the NASA’s Lunar Renaissance Orbitor (LRO) for Kids page, it’s full of fun facts and activities.
You can also see the amazingly details images of the moon surfaces here.