Talk:Moon/Lead

The lede as of this revision is rather straggly and long, and has a lot of infobox-level information. It's a really interesting satellite - this should be highlighted. Here is my suggestion: Iridia (talk) 01:51, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. It is the largest moon in the Solar System relative to the size of its planet, a quarter the diameter of Earth and 1/81 its mass, and is the second densest satellite after Io. It is also in synchronous rotation with Earth, always showing the same face; this near side is marked with dark volcanic maria among the bright ancient crustal highlands and prominent impact craters. Despite being the brightest object in the sky after the Sun, its surface is actually very dark, with a similar reflectance to coal. The Moon's gravitational influence produces the ocean tides and the minute lengthening of the calendar year. The Moon's current orbital distance, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth, causes the Moon and Sun to be the same size in the sky: this allows the Moon to exactly cover the Sun in total solar eclipses, a very rare cosmic event.

The Moon is the only celestial body on which human beings have made a manned landing. While the Soviet Union's Luna programme was the first to reach the Moon with unmanned spacecraft, the United States' NASA Apollo program achieved the only manned missions to date, beginning with the first manned lunar mission by Apollo 8 in 1968, and six manned lunar landings between 1969 and 1972–the first being Apollo 11 in 1969. These missions returned over 400 kg of lunar rocks, which have been used to develop a detailed geological understanding of the origin of the Moon 4.5 billion years ago in a giant impact, the formation of its internal structure, and its subsequent history. The Moon has since been visited only by unmanned spacecraft, but these have come from many countries: since 2004, Europe, Japan, China, India and the United States have successfully sent lunar orbiters. These spacecraft have confirmed the discovery of water ice in permanently shadowed craters at the poles and bound into the lunar regolith. Future manned missions to the Moon are planned but not yet underway; the Moon remains, under the Outer Space Treaty, free to all nations to explore for peaceful purposes.

It's great to see good work going into this article! With the lead, however, please note the WP:LEAD recommends a three to four paragraph lead for articles over 30kb (this article is over 90kb IIRC). Also, be careful to make sure that all information in the lead is also included and sourced in the body of the article, and that the lead correctly summarizes the body of the article without leaving out any major issues. (I'm not saying your version does, as I haven't checked that closely, it's just a comment!) The length thing is probably going to be the main issue with your version. Dana boomer (talk) 14:12, 24 March 2010 (UTC)