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The moon is shrinking as its interior cools, causing low ridges known as “thrust faults” and moonquakes. Data from seismometers placed by Apollo astronauts show most earthquakes occur at the moon’s farthest point from Earth. NASA plans to send a crew to the moon by 2024.
Much like a grape gradually shrinking into a raisin, Earth’s moon has changed over the past hundreds of millions of years. Scientists point to what they call “thrust faults” — low ridges that look like stepped cliffs — on the lunar surface as evidence that the globe is shrinking as its interior cools. These fault-like ridges typically extend a few miles, and their formations create “moonquakes,” with tremors that can be moderately strong, estimated at “about five on the Richter scale,” says Thomas Watters, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Health. air and space Washington.
To the moon, and beyond:
Scientists analyzed data from a series of seismometers placed on the moon by various Apollo astronauts, starting with the Apollo 11 crew in 1969. Four seismometers are still recording shallow lunar earthquakes.
In research published in a 2019 issue of Nature Geoscience, a new analysis shows that most earthquakes occur when the moon is at or near its apogee, the farthest point from Earth in its orbit.
NASA is planning to send a crew that will include a female astronaut to the moon by 2024. They hope to land on the lunar South Pole in the first in a series of lunar expeditions that could eventually lead to a mission to Mars.
