Because the Earth is doing the work of increasing the Moon's momentum, the Earth's rotation slows down in turn, as its momentum goes to the Moon. To put it another way, as the Moon's orbital momentum ...

(Related reading: The impacts that gave us the Moon may explain why Earth has life today) ...

The Soviet Union’s successful Zond-5 space mission in 1968 prompted NASA to speed up the Apollo program—ultimately driving it to its successful conclusion the following year.