50th anniversary of Apollo 11: How we came to know a lot about the Moon

Here's a brief timeline of the landmark moments of lunar exploration in modern times

The Moon has been a subject of fascination since time immemorial. It has always found a place among all kinds of stories  through astrology, poetry, myths, religion et al. More than two and a half millennia before man set his foot on the Moon, he set his mind towards understanding it. 

There are references in the works of ancient Babylonian, Greek, Indian and Chinese philosophers around 500 BCE. Throughout the next two thousand years, the Moon was studied by various astronomers. The big breakthrough, however, happened in 1609, when Galileo Galilei drew one of the first telescopic drawings of the