faces the Earth. Only with the advent of lunar missions were scientists able to see the Moon’s other face. On Earth, the Moon’s gravitational field affects ocean tides. 
    The Moon’s formation remains a mystery. Scientists once thought it may have been spun off from the Earth billions of years ago, when  our planet was spinning rapidly. But lunar rocks collected by astronauts undermined this theory: they were different from those that constitute the Earth’s surface. According to another theory, the Moon was formed by the accretion of asteroid-like objects, in much the same way as the rocky planets, and was then captured by Earth’s gravity. But again, lunar rocks proved to be