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LiveScience
LiveScience
Sarah Wells

DARK SECRETS: How far away is the moon | Rare Historical Photos

An artist's rendering of the moon in between the Earth and Sun.

It may seem like a question with a simple answer: How far away is the moon? But the distance between Earth and our closest neighbor is more nuanced than a single number.

"The commonly quoted average distance of 384,400 kilometers, or 238,855 miles, is a good approximation," said Craig Hardgrove, an associate professor of Earth and space exploration at Arizona State University and principal investigator on LunaH-Map, a remote mission designed to detect ice deposits on the moon.

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