How far away is the moon?
It’s about 235,000 miles (375,000 kilometers) away from the earth’s surface. However, it’s drifting about 1.3 inches (3.5 centimeters) farther away every year. That’s because tides on the rotating earth gently pull the moon forward in its orbit as they slowly extract energy from the earth’s rotation. Because of this transfer of energy from the earth’s rotation to the moon’s orbit, the moon is gradually slipping farther away from the earth.