Google offers ‘guided tour’ of the moon

Google Inc. is offering a more wide-ranging view of the Moon, 40 years after humans first landed there.

To commemorate Monday’s anniversary of the Apollo 11 crew’s first steps on the lunar surface, Google Earth is adding a guided moon tour with astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Jack Schmitt, who was a pilot on the later Apollo 17 mission.

The free software also offers panoramic images shot by the Apollo astronauts, new video footage and other features.

The new features are available with the Google Earth 5.0 download.

Some images already have been available through Google’s online mapping service at http://moon.google.com.