Jules Verne

Jules Vernes 1869 novel Around the Moon also known as Circling the Moon and All Around the Moon is the follow-up to his 1865 book From the Earth to the Moon. The journey to the Moon which was merely started in the first novel is continued in this science fiction story. The two were occasionally merged in later English publications under the heading From the Earth to the Moon and Around It. The 1902 motion picture A Trip to the Moon was based on the books From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon. The massive Columbiad space gun fires the bullet-shaped projectile from the Baltimore Gun Club into space along with its three occupants Barbicane Nicholl and Michel Ardan to begin the five-day voyage to the Moon. A small brilliant asteroid flies by them within a few hundred yards a few minutes into the flight but it avoids colliding with the projectile. The asteroid was dragged into the Earths gravity and transformed into a second moon.