The Geografile

This item appears on page 46 of the January 2018 issue.

Though it has long been stated that the Great Wall of China is visible from the moon, this myth was debunked in 1969 by American astronaut Alan Bean, who reported that when his spacecraft was only a few thousand miles from Earth (the moon is about 230,000 miles distant), no trace of human building was visible. The Great Wall is not even visible from the International Space Station, orbiting 205 to 270 miles out, though the pyramids at Giza can be discerned.