moon tagged posts

Scientists may have solved a long-standing mystery about why the Moon’s two sides are so different, using samples collected from its farside for the first time. Their findings suggest that uneven heating from Earth’s gravitational pull drove enormous flows of ancient magma, creating the dramatically different lunar landscapes we see today.

Scientists investigating why the Moon’s two sides look so different have uncovered new evidence that could help explain this long-standing mystery. A research team led by Professor Hejiu Hui of Nanjing University analyzed lunar rocks collected by China’s Chang’e-6 (CE6) mission and found clues suggesting that enormous movements of molten rock shaped the Moon billions of years ago.

The researchers examined the chemical compositions of three t...

The moon’s surface may be more than just a dusty, barren landscape. Over billions of years, tiny particles from Earth’s atmosphere have landed in the lunar soil, creating a possible source of life-sustaining substances for future astronauts. But scientists have only recently begun to understand how these particles make the long journey from Earth to the moon and how long the process has been taking place.

New r...

Data from India’s recent Chandrayaan-3 mission supports the idea that an ocean of molten rock once covered the moon. Scientists from the mission have published their new findings in the journal Nature.

On August 23, 2023, a lander called Vikram successfully touched down on the lunar surface. Controllers then deployed a rover called Pragyan, which had been stowed on Vikram, to explore the landing site.

The location where Vikram touched down was further south than any other landing craft had previously been on the moon. It gave scientists an insight into the geology of the moon that had not yet been sampled.

Pragyan’s measurem...

Small Bang
Scientists seem to have figured out why the Moon is made up of such weird and heavy rocks: way back in the day, it turned itself inside out.

For decades now, scientists have pretty much agreed that the Moon formed from debris that flew off the young Earth when another planet smashed into it about 4.5 billion years. That cosmic wreckage “coalesced, cooled and solidified” to form the Moon as we know it today, researchers from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory wrote in a press release — but what happened next is something of a “choose-your-own adventure,” as the scientists describe it.

In a new paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the LPL researchers found that the surprisingly high concentration of titanium found in Moon rocks, suc...