Over The Moon

As we reflect on the 50th anniversary of our first tentative steps on the lunar surface, Louise Devoy explores our fascination with the Moon, as shown in a major exhibition she has co-curated in the National Maritime Museum

- Louise Devoy

Caught in a tug-of-war between two rival super-powers at the height of the Cold War, the Moon was regarded in July 1969 as a political trophy and a place to display technological prowess in front of a global audience. Thanks to a budget of $25billion and the combined effort of over 400,000 people, the Apollo programme fulfilled John F Kennedy’s ambitious declaration to reach the Moon made just eight years earlier. It provided us with the opportunity to capture the Moon both photographically and physically, in the form of over 380kg of rock samples that helped us identify lunar meteorites (3).

It also ended centuries of imaginative speculation about the nature of the lunar surface, although the scientific debates about the origins and geological nature of the Moon (1) continue to occupy scientists even half a century later.

But our fascination with the Moon extends back to the earliest civilisations and remains embedded within our cultural heritage today. To our ancestors, the Moon was easily visible with the naked eye but tantalizingly out of reach. They relied on its changing, but predictable, 29.5-day cycle of phases as a natural timekeeper for agricultural calendars and religious festivals.