To the Moon and Back chapter sampler

The amaz i ng Aus t ra l i ans a t t he f o r e f r on t o f space t rave l

Bryan Sullivan with Jackie French I ll us t ra t i ons by Gus Go r don

Angus&Robertson An imprint of HarperCollins Children’sBooks ,Australia First published in Australia in 2004 This edition published in 2019 by HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty Limited

ABN 36 009 913 517 harpercollins.com.au

Text copyright © Bryan Sullivan and Jackie French 2004 Illustrations copyright © Gus Gordon 2004

The rights of Bryan Sullivan, Jackie French and Gus Gordon to be identified as the authors and illustrator of this work, have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000 . This work is copyright.Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 , no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. HarperCollins Publishers Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney NSW 2000,Australia Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale,Auckland 0632, New Zealand A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF, United Kingdom 2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor,Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada 195 Broadway, NewYork NY 10007, USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

ISBN 978 1 4607 5774 1 (paperback) ISBN 978 0 7304 9132 3 (ebook)

Cover design by Hazel Lam, HarperCollins Design Studio Cover images: kangaroo and moon by shutterstock.com; dish and Honeysuckle Creek staff by Hamish Lindsay, reproduced by Colin Mackellar Internal design by Sandra Nobes,Tou-Can Design Typeset in Garamond by Kirby Jones Printed and bound in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group The papers used by HarperCollins in the manufacture of this book are a natural, recyclable product made from wood grown in sustainable plantation forests. The fibre source and manufacturing processes meet recognised international environmental standards, and carry certification.

Half a century ago we flew: Did the unbelievable Made real the unachievable All this we did, for you. Deep into the endless black Small ships revealing The earth has no ceiling We flew to the Moon And came back. I am an old man Who gazes at stars I see young minds yearning Ideas spark and burning: You’ll travel to Mars To Centauri — and back.

J.F.

A Note From Dr Karl …

In 1969 I was 21 years old, and working as a physicist at the steelworks near Wollongong. I had been reading one science fiction story every day since I was about 14, so of course I was a great fan of the space program. On 21 July 1969, I walked out of the central laboratories and crossed the bridge to the cafeteria on the other side of the six-lane highway that ran through the steelworks. My timing was perfect. I saw Armstrong jump down onto the surface of the Moon, and then both Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the Moon. A few more decades would pass before I discovered how complicated each Saturn V rocket was, and how close to disaster each Apollo mission came. At that time, only constant on-the-run fixes got the astronauts to the Moon and back. For example, the switch that controlled the rocket motor that would blast the Apollo 11 landing craft,

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To the Moon and Back

Eagle, back into orbit was broken by the support backpack on one of the astronaut’s spacesuits. The internal workings of the switch were perfectly fine, but the toggle (the bit that you flicked up or down) was broken. The switch wouldn’t work, even when they shoved the broken toggle into the hole. It had been decided that the astronauts carry no general tools on board the Eagle in order to save weight. The solution to their dilemma was brilliant. The astronauts had ballpoint pens — specially made to work in zero gravity — known as Fisher Space Pens. The cartridge inside the pen was filled with dry nitrogen gas (at 4 atmospheres of pressure) that pushed coloured glue, not ink, past the ball out of the nozzle and onto the page. The astronauts unscrewed the Fisher Space Pen and inserted the cartridge into the hole where the toggle used to be. The replacement switch worked perfectly, and the astronauts were able to take off from the surface of the Moon. This book gives fascinating insights into the part Australian technicians played in getting the astronauts to the Moon and back. I wish a book like this had been available during the time of the Moon landings, so that I had a better understanding and appreciation of what went on. Dr Karl Kruszelnicki

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A Note to This Edition

Fifteen years ago, my wife Jackie and I wrote this book to explain the (mostly) ignored but vital role that Australia had played in humanity’s journey to the Moon. Back then, it seemed as if our dreams of journeying, not just to the Moon but beyond, had been lost when Apollo 18 remained on the ground and the Apollo program was brought abruptly to an end, leaving only footprints, some rubbish and flags upon the Moon. No human foot has touched the Moon’s surface since Apollo 17 . Our new ‘space age’ is primarily commercial, not soaring upwards for knowledge or just to say ‘we were there’. Yet, the daily fabric of our lives has been forever changed by the unintentional advances made during those heady days of invention and adventure. Now in 2019, it is 50 years since that first footprint was left in the moon dust. Those 50 years have gone

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so quickly, and have brought so much. But at last, Japan, the United States and private companies plan to take people to the Moon: to study, to experiment, to be tourists or miners, or even to create a base from which we may send out ships into the vast darkness beyond our world. Apollo 11 began as a dream. Maybe these new plans will remain only words. But just like when, as a young man, I watched the Moon and thought, I am helping to send humanity there, and back again , tonight, as an old man, I will watch the Moon and think, Hello, old friend. Perhaps soon you and Earth’s family of nations will meet again . Bryan Sullivan, 2019

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INTRODUCTION

The Emu in the Sky

True stories have many beginnings. Perhaps the story of Honeysuckle Creek and of man’s journey to the Moon began more than 40,000 years ago, when the people of the Ngunnawal and other Indigenous nations who lived and visited near what would one day be called Honeysuckle Creek gazed up each night between the hills at the Emu in the Sky. When we look up at the night sky we see lines of stars dotted across the blackness. The stars form shapes — Orion’s Belt, the Big Dipper and the Southern Cross. But the shape of the Emu in the Sky is formed from the dark spaces of the Milky Way, not from the stars. Its head is near the Southern Cross, its body stretches across Scorpio and, in winter, its legs reach to the horizon. You can only see the Emu if you are far away from man-made light — in towns there are too many

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bright lights to see most of the stars, so the dark shapes between them are lost as well. When the Indigenous space watchers saw the Emu in the Sky with its legs folded up under its body (or in our terms, the densest part of the Milky Way was rising), they knew that they would have lots of eggs to eat because male emus on Earth would then be sitting on their eggs. Even today you can see Aboriginal rock-art emus near Honeysuckle Creek in the shape of the Emu in the Sky. And still every month the full Moon rises, round and golden, above the tiny creek among the trees — where there was once a space tracking station that followed the journey of the men who travelled to the Moon. HOW WAS THE MOON FORMED? The asteroid collision that helped wipe out the dinosaurs was only a hiccup compared to the collision that made the Moon 4.5 billion years ago! Earth was still molten then. In fact it wasn’t really Earth as we know it today, but a ‘proto-Earth’ — a planet only half the mass it is now. However it was rapidly getting bigger as it gobbled up rubble that had condensed from the dust cloud swirling around the young Sun. A rival planet was also orbiting the Sun dangerously close to our ‘proto-Earth’. This giant blob was about one-

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third the size of Earth. Both were hot, turbulent places with molten rock mantles wrapped around ferocious dense cores of liquid iron. One day the two planets collided, spewing enough dust, rock and vapour into orbit to form a broad ring about 12,000 kilometres above Earth. The Moon was formed from the outer edge of the ring of dust and rock while the inner part of the ring fell back to Earth. The new ‘Moon’ then slowly swung further out into orbit about 380,000 kilometres from Earth — which is where it is now. How do we know? Why couldn’t the Moon have been formed from giant swirls of matter spat out by a madly turning early Earth? The answer is iron. When the two giant bodies collided their heavy molten iron cores melted together, while part of the rocky outer parts splashed out to make the Moon. So now 30 per cent of Earth is iron, but iron only makes up 2 per cent of the Moon. If the Moon had been made from the same material as the whole Earth, it would have a similar percentage of iron and other matter. It all probably happened very fast — a few hours for the two planets to collide, a few weeks for the present Earth to form from what had been two mini planets, with a ‘young Moon’ orbiting about 20,000 kilometres away. That ‘ancient Earth’ was still much smaller than our Earth is now. It took about 50 million years of more asteroid and meteor collisions to make Earth and the Moon the actual sizes they are now. The close presence of the Moon and

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To the Moon and Back To t h e o o n a n d Ba c k

its gravity gradually slowed down the madly spinning Earth giving us the comfortable 24-hour day we now have. Most other planets have moons that are tiny compared to ours — our Moon is about one-quarter the size of Earth. Having a big moon close by stops Earth from wobbling around too much on its axis — giving us regular seasons with no wild climate swings. and its gravity gradually slowed down the madly spinning Earth giving us the comfortable 24-hour day we now have. r i t - r t i i l t r fr li t much on its axis — giving us regular se sons with no wild climate swing .

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CHAPTER 1

The Space Race

There was another beginning, of course — in 1961 — when the young American President, John F. Kennedy, promised that the United States would land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. Human beings had already gone to the Moon, but only in our imaginations. We had been gazing at it, wondering what was there, studying it ever since Galileo’s first modern telescope could show us those strange markings were craters. Science fiction stories and comic strips had talked of colonising the Moon for decades. But even though German scientists had created rockets that might be able to fly above Earth’s atmosphere during World War II — and the same scientists were now working for the United States or the Soviet Union — by the 1960s most scientists and technicians thought that a journey to the Moon was still decades away — if

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it was possible at all. How could a human being possibly survive the cold, the vacuum of space, and the massive forces needed to lift a spacecraft off this planet? Those were the days of the Space Race — the competition between the United States and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) to dominate space for world supremacy and power. But there was more to it than that. Behind the vast amounts of money poured into the Space Race by the two superpowers there lay dreams and ideals. President Kennedy was a young man of energy and vision, and he had a young man’s dream. He and other young scientists, technicians and dreamers of the time weren’t intimidated by the thought that what they were attempting had never been done before. There was no direct tactical advantage in being the first man to walk on the Moon, and collecting moon rocks and discovering how and why they were so different from those on Earth would not help you build bombs to kill people of other nations. The 1960s was a time of incredible idealism. It was a generation where young people wore flowers in their hair and dreamt of a world of peace and love. Scientists imagined a world where technology would solve all the world’s problems and robots would serve us breakfast before we jumped on a hovercraft to get to work. It seemed as though human beings could

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The Space Race

invent anything. It was the Russians who put the first artificial satellite, Sputnik , into orbit in 1957. This provoked the then United States President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, into forming the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). At that stage the American space budget was still limited, and their first three attempts at launching a rocket into space had disastrous results. The first rocket exploded just after launch in a searing fireball. The second one failed to reach the speed required to escape Earth’s gravity, so it burnt up as it fell back to Earth. On the third attempt the booster rocket failed, which spun the rocket back to Earth. Meanwhile, the Russian spaceship Mechta ( Luna 1 as it was also known) was the first man-made object to break away from Earth’s gravity. It was followed by an unmanned Russian spacecraft that actually crashed on the Moon, and yet another that orbited the Moon taking photos of its far side — the side that is always turned away from Earth. It wasn’t long before the Russians also sent the first man into space — Yuri Gagarin. The Americans — and the newly elected President Kennedy — were under pressure to catch up and do something spectacular to show the world that they weren’t going to be left behind. On 25 May 1961, President Kennedy announced: ‘I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,

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[ 12 ] dreamt of using their rocket designs to build spacecraft for space exploration, not war. Now others were following this dream too. before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.’ This was the birth of the Apollo project, named after Apollo, the ancient Greek god of the Moon, as well as of Learning, Science and Youth. Yes, President Kennedy wanted to beat the Russians. Yes, the space program that finally took a man to the Moon was based on war technology — and part of a war-like build-up. But it was not just about beating the Russians. (Later President Kennedy would suggest to the Russians that the two nations collaborate in space research and exploration — a mission on behalf of all peoples of the world.) It was an expression of humanity’s passion to understand the universe — and to travel further and further into outer space. At the beginning of the 1960s, however, it still looked like an impossible dream. THE GERMAN ROCKETS OF WORLD WAR II The rocket engineering that finally took astronauts to the Moon probably began with the German V2 rockets of World War II. These giant, long- range missiles ran on liquid fuel and were designed to fly long distances before they fell to the cities below and destroyed, on impact, all things about b ating he Russians. (Lat r President Kennedy would suggest to the Russians that the tw nations collaborate i sp ce research and xpl ration — a mission on behalf of all peoples of the world.) It was an expres ion of humanity’s passion to understand he univer e — and to travel fur her and further into outer space. At the b ginning f the 1960s, h wever, it still looked like an impossib e dream. THE GERMAN ROCKETS OF WORLD WAR II The ocke engine ring th t f nally took astronauts to the Moon probably began with the German V2 rockets of World War II. These giant, long-range missiles ran on liquid fuel and were designed to fly long distances before they fell to the cit es below and destroyed, on impact, ll things ar u d them. The rockets ere t brainchild of Wernher von Braun and his team. At the e d of the war vo Braun and other German engineers emigrat d to the United Sta es, while oth rs went to work in t Soviet Uni n. Although the German rockets were made to destroy English cities, von Braun and his team To t h e Mo o n a n d Ba c k

The Space Race

around them. The rockets were the brainchild of Wernher von Braun and his team. At the end of the war von Braun and other German engineers emigrated to the United States, while others went to work in the Soviet Union. Although the German rockets were made to destroy English cities, von Braun and his team dreamt of using their rocket designs to build spacecraft for space exploration, not war. Now others were following this dream too.

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CHAPTER 2

The First Man in Space

Yuri Gagarin looked like a hero should — he was intelligent, fit, and had a smile that lit up a room. He grew up in Russia during World War II, hiding in a bunker from German soldiers in the farming village where his father was a carpenter and his mother a dairy maid. After the war Gagarin became a pilot in the air force, and when Russia launched the first spacecraft, Sputnik , into outer space he dreamt of being the first man to travel beyond Earth. He applied for space- flight training and was accepted. Like other would-be astronauts Yuri had to go through extraordinary training. He was placed in low pressure chambers (to test his endurance at high altitude), exposed to searing heat and freezing cold, subjected to deafening noises, and whirled around at incredibly high speeds. The Russian scientists did not know what

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astronauts would have to endure in space, so they were trained for extreme conditions. Gagarin excelled in all areas of training and was eventually selected for the first manned flight into outer space. On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin, wearing a Soviet astronaut’s bright orange spacesuit and a giant ‘fish- bowl’ space helmet, bade each of the ground crew farewell with a hug, and then climbed the stairs to the spacecraft perched on top of the 30-metre rocket. He waved to the crowd below and yelled, ‘See you soon!’ Gagarin strapped himself into his seat and waited, while final checks were made. After about an hour he joked through the intercom: ‘What do the doctors say, is my heart still beating?’ ‘Your pulse is 64, breathing 24, everything is normal!’ Ground Control replied. ‘Roger, that means I am still alive!’ announced Gagarin. There was no dramatic countdown, no ‘three, two, one, blast-off!’ The controller simply pressed the button, firing the giant engines which began to roar. The spacecraft began to shudder. Gagarin yelled, ‘Let’s go!’ (or in Russian, Poyekhali! ). The spacecraft rose slowly into the air. The first giant booster rocket broke away and fell back to Earth. When the second-stage rocket fired, it propelled the spacecraft even faster. Gagarin was pushed so hard against his seat that he couldn’t speak.

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T h e F i r s t Ma n i n Sp a c e

Yuri Gagarin. On his way to the launch pad, to be the first man in space. ASIF A. SIDDIQI rin. n is ay t , i . I I I

After three minutes the blast protection shield separated from the spacecraft. Gagarin saw the blue of the sky change slowly into the darkness of space. Space was dark, and weightless, but not silent. The spacecraft was noisy. Gagarin looked out through the porthole, and for the first time a human being saw Earth from space. It was beautiful. The spacecraft circled Earth, passing into night, and then into daylight again, all within an hour. Gagarin slurped down some salty jelly, had a drink of water, then lay on the couch and strapped himself back into his seat for re-entry. It had been one hour and 18 minutes since he had left Earth. After three minutes the blast protection shield separated from the spacecraft. Gagarin saw the blue of the sky change slowly into the darkness of space. Space was dark, and weightless, but not silent. The spacecraft was noisy. Gagarin looked out through the porthole, and for the first time a human being saw Earth from space. It was beautiful. The spacecraft circled Earth, passing into night, and then into daylight again, all within an hour. Gagarin slurped down some salty jelly, had a drink of water, then lay on the couch and strapped himself back into his seat for re-entry. It had been one hour and 18 minutes since he had left Earth.

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Would the force of gravity (the G-force) be even stronger on the way down? Would he survive it? No- one knew. The retro-rockets fired. It was time for the protective capsule to break away from the control module. But the cable connecting them was stuck fast. The spacecraft began to spin out of control! The capsule got hot, and even hotter. Gagarin could hear the metal cracking in the heat. He was re-entering the atmosphere. While this was happening he could not speak to Ground Control, nor could they talk to him. Then suddenly the cable burst into flames and disintegrated in the friction of Earth’s atmosphere. Gagarin saw great tongues of flame through the porthole. It was even hotter now. The capsule vibrated violently. The pressure on his body was so great that every muscle screamed with pain. His vision became blurred. When the pain eased he could see again. Outside the porthole he saw blue sky. An orange light on the control panel told Gagarin to prepare for landing. Suddenly the hatch was blown off automatically by Ground Control operators. The spacecraft’s parachutes opened above him. Gagarin was supposed to be ejected automatically from the capsule too, but he pressed the ‘eject’ button himself, in case the automatic controls didn’t work in the madly spinning craft.

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T h e F i r s t Ma n i n Sp a c e

Slowly he and his seat — still strapped together — drifted down to Earth, his parachute above him, the green and brown farmland getting closer and closer. He landed by a potato patch, where a girl was digging potatoes with her grandmother. They were frightened at first of the strange figure in orange overalls. But as they later said, ‘His smile was so nice we forgot we were scared!’ Slowly he and his seat — still strapped together — drifted down to Earth, his parachute above him, the green and brown farmland getting closer and closer. He landed by a potato patch, where a girl was digging potatoes with her grandmother. They were frightened at first of the strange figure in orange overalls. But as they later said, ‘His smile was so nice we forgot we were scared!’

WHY DOES THE MOON LOOK BIGGER ON THE HORIZON THAN WHEN IT’S HIGH IN THE SKY? WHY DOES THE MOON LOOK BIGGER ON THE HORIZON THAN WHEN IT’S HIGH IN THE SKY?

When the Moon is on the horizon you see it next to landscapes like mountains and buildings and, in comparison to them, the Moon is enormous. However up in the sky it is floating in blackness, with nothing to compare it with — so it looks smaller. And when the Moon is on the horizon its light is bent over a greater When the Moon is on the horizon you see it next to landscapes like mountains and buildings and, in comparison to them, the Moon is enormous. However, up in the sky it is floating in blackness, with nothing to compare it with — so it looks smaller. And when the Moon is on the horizon its light is

range of angles than when it’s up above us, making the Moon look bigger. But the Moon still looks bigger than it should be — and no one knows why! bent over a greater range of angles than when it’s up above us, making the Moon look bigger. But the Moon still looks bigger than it should be — and no one knows why!

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WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A MOON AND A PLANET?

A moon goes around a planet, and a planet goes around a sun. Most of the stars that we see are really suns, and many of them will have planets circling them … and some of those planets will have moons.

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CHAPTER 3

A Tech Kid Grows Up

There was yet another beginning — hundreds of boys like me, a kid called Bryan Sullivan, tinkering with machines, making our own radios, reading science fiction and dreaming of outer space. When I was a little kid I wanted to be an electrician at Luna Park in Sydney, with its millions of light bulbs. I thought it would be exciting playing with the electric magic of dodgem cars and ferris wheels, all powered by electric motors driving wheels, cogs, chains and belts. Electricity fascinated me. Just why did the toaster get hot when it was plugged into those little holes in the plastic socket on the wall? Where did the music on the wireless come from? When I was 12, I made my first crystal (radio) set from just a coil of copper wire wound around a cardboard cylinder, a ‘cat whisker’ (a piece of crystal) and an old pair of ex-army headphones. At night I

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could lie in bed and listen to music without disturbing anybody, and at no cost. It had no batteries at all, just a long piece of aerial wire hanging out of my bedroom window. My dad was a fitter-and-turner at the Cockatoo Island Dockyard and could not afford to send me to university. So on my sixteenth birthday I started a five- year apprenticeship as an electrical fitter–mechanic at the Cockatoo Island Dockyard, to work on wireless, radar, sonar, gyro-compass and weapon electrics. In the evenings I went to night school to study electronic engineering. In my spare time I played with all sorts of electrical bits and pieces. In those days, military disposal stores in Sydney sold an amazing range of surplus equipment left over from World War II, especially radio transmitters and receivers, along with a wide assortment of electrical components. I used some of them to make Dad a black-and-white television set — in the 1950s TVs were rare and expensive beasts! I even made myself a remote control so I didn’t have to keep getting up and adjusting the picture — it may be the first remote control ever made. If only I had patented it!

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As boys, many of the men I would later work with were all fascinated by new technology — kids like Ron Hicks in Canada, and John Saxon and Mike Dinn in England. Mike took his model train engine apart to see how it worked and was unable to get it to go again. John made himself a crystal set when he was 12, as well as a massive three-stage radio receiver which covered the floor of his bedroom. It used three different kinds of batteries, including a lead acid one that needed to be charged at the local radio shop. It even worked — eventually. My friend Brian Hale also tinkered with old valve radios when he was a kid. His parents finally decided to find the money to send him to the Marconi School of Wireless in Sydney. He says: ‘They probably thought that if I liked taking things apart, it would be good to know how to put them back together.’ One day we would all be working together on a project more ambitious than any we had ever dreamt about. As Colin Power says: ‘I never thought that, when I left my country town at the age of 17 to train as a technician with the Postmaster-General’s Department (now Telstra and Australia Post), I would be part of one of the greatest technological triumphs of the 20th century.’

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WHY DOES THE MOON LOOK THE SAME SIZE AS THE SUN?

The Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon — and it’s also 400 times further away! This coincidence allows us to observe ‘lunar eclipses’ (when the Moon covers the Sun). If the Sun were any nearer, the Moon would only be able to cover part of it. A solar eclipse can only occur close to a ‘new moon’, when the Moon is directly between Earth and the Sun, so that the Moon’s shadow falls on the part of Earth that will see the eclipse. This doesn’t happen every new moon because the Moon’s orbit is tilted about five degrees from the plane of the ecliptic — the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

WHY DOES THE MOON HAVE DIFFERENT SHAPES?

Although the Moon is always the same shape, just like Earth, we can only see the bit of the Moon that’s lit by the Sun. If you live in the southern hemisphere — as we do in

Australia — you see the ‘south’ pole of the Moon at its top. But in the northern hemisphere you see the Moon ‘right side up’, with its ‘north’ pole at the top of the Moon. So our ‘Man in the Moon’ has to live ‘upside down’ in the southern hemisphere!

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