Exploration of the Moon invention of the telescope, an increasing number of people began to recognise the Moon as a sphere, though many believed that it was "perfectly smooth". In 1609, Galileo Galilei drew one of the first telescopic drawings of the Moon in his book and noted that it was not smooth but had mountains and craters. Later in the 17th century, Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi drew a map of the Moon and gave many craters the names they still have today. On maps, the dark parts of the Moon's surface were called "maria" (singular "mare") or seas, and the
Of a Fire on the Moon its poignant publication in the months following the launch comes as a sobering blow to the consciousness of Americans who have yet to dissect the moon launch as anything other than a moment of American supremacy. The 40th anniversary of the first moon landing was marked in 2009 by the release of an abridged, limited edition of the text, re-packaged with images from NASA and "Life" magazine. This production retitled the work, MoonFire, and was presented in an aluminium box with a lid shaped like the crater-pocked surface of the moon; the object was mounted on four legs resembling lunar