In commemoration of some minor scientific curiosity from 40 years ago, Google has launched Moon for Google Earth, giving everyone's favorite dusty rock the full treatment, including historical imagery, extensive multimedia content and 3D mission recreations narrated by actual astronauts.

I can't count how many times I've been been through the Apollo 11 mission—in movies, books, documentaries and elsewhere—but I still found the Google Earth reenactment, with its Sketchup-modeled spacecraft and informative voiceover, completely engaging. Historical image data, Street-View-like landing site exploration and Google Earth's requisite zooming and swooshing are enough for anyone to get lost in for a few minutes, and for NASA nerds to get sucked in for an entire afternoon. [Google]

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