This summer I had the good fortune of being able to spend a day at the Metropolitan Art Museum’s luminous art exhibit celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing on July 20, 1969. The exhibit traces through four hundred years of attempts to capture the elusive Moon, and the outgrowth of artistic, scientific, and technological innovations that such enchantment inspired. It’s almost as if our drive to get a little closer to the Moon comes from something deep within us. And as it turns out, that might not be far from the truth. During the Apollo missions, samples of Moon rocks and Moon dust were collected so that they could be studied in the hopes of determining the Moon’s origin. In the past astronomers had speculated that the Moon started out as an asteroid-like body hurtling through space when it was snared into orbit by the Earth’s gravitational pull. But analysis of the mineral composition of the Moon rocks revealed that the Moon and the Earth are made of the same material. That led astronomers to develop the Giant Impact Hypothesis, which theorizes that early on in the creation of the Solar System, a planet the size of Mars slammed into the side of Earth, pulling off a chunk that reformed into the Moon. So that’s what might explain our sense of being drawn to the Moon— kinship.

There’s still time to see the “Apollo’s Muse” exhibit– it’s at the Met until September 22nd.