I am thinking that it is about 250,000. If that is the case then a beam of laser light which travels at 186,000 miles per second would take just over 2 seconds to get there and back to Earth. The reason I asked, is that i saw a documentary about the Apollo missions and on one of them they left a mirror or reflector which scientists still use to reflect laser beams back to Earth. They claimed that the moon's orbit is moving out away from Earth about 1-inch per year. I assume that means that if the moon is 4-billion years-old, then it has moved away from the Earth about four billion inches since it first formed. 4,000,000,000/12 = 333,333,333 feet or 333,333,333/5280 feet in a mile = 63,131 miles further from the Earth than when it was first formed. Anyone know the moon's present distance from Earth?
2007-07-15
16:17:45
·
8 answers
·
asked by
Romeo
7
in
Astronomy & Space