A team of geologists and planetary scientists from the California Institute of Technology, the University of California Santa Cruz, New York University, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center reports evidence that Io's volcanic ...
An international team of astronomers and astrophysicists has confirmed the first known observance of a tidally locked super-Earth exoplanet. In their paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, the group describes the unique ...
Hidden beneath the heavily cratered surface of Mimas, one of Saturn's smallest moons lies a secret: a global ocean of liquid water. This astonishing discovery, led by Dr. Valéry Lainey of the Observatoire de Paris-PSL and ...
Astrobiology
Feb 7, 2024
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312
Earth's moon shrank more than 150 feet in circumference as its core gradually cooled over the last few hundred million years. In much the same way a grape wrinkles when it shrinks down to a raisin, the moon also develops ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 25, 2024
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841
New research from a Western University postdoctoral fellow shows the early lunar crust, which makes up the surface of the moon, was considerably enriched in water more than 4 billion years ago, counter to previously held ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 15, 2024
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166
A team of materials scientists at Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, working with colleagues from the China Academy of Space Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, all in China, has found that billions of years ...
A team of agronomists and biotechnicians at China Agricultural University has found that adding bacteria to simulated lunar regolith increased the amount of phosphate in the soil for use by plants. In their study, published ...
More than 4 billion years ago, when the solar system was still young and the Earth was still growing, a giant object the size of Mars crashed into the Earth. The biggest piece that broke off of the early Earth formed our ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 23, 2023
3
121
A team of space scientists at the Planetary Science Institute, working with colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen University and the University of Aberdeen, has used data from China's Chang'E-4 rover to ...
An international team of space scientists has found evidence that hydrogen peroxide on Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, exists only on its higher latitudes. For their research, reported in the journal Science Advances, the ...
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is 384,403 km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth. The common centre of mass of the system (the barycentre) is located about 1,700 km—a quarter the Earth's radius—beneath the surface of the Earth. The Moon makes a complete orbit around the Earth every 27.3 days (the orbital period), and the periodic variations in the geometry of the Earth–Moon–Sun system are responsible for the phases of the moon, which repeat every 29.5 days (the synodic period).
The Moon's diameter is 3,474 km, a little more than a quarter of that of the Earth. Thus, the Moon's surface area is less than a tenth that of the Earth (about a quarter the Earth's land area, approximately as large as Russia, Canada, and the United States combined), and its volume is about 2 percent that of Earth. The pull of gravity at its surface is about 17 percent of that at the Earth's surface.
The Moon is the only celestial body to which humans have traveled and upon which humans have performed a manned landing. While the Soviet Union's Luna program was the first to reach the Moon with unmanned spacecraft, the NASA Apollo program by the United States achieved the only manned missions to date, beginning with the first manned lunar mission by Apollo 8 in 1968, and six manned lunar landings between 1969 and 1972- the first being Apollo 11 in 1969. Human exploration of the Moon temporarily ceased with the conclusion of the Apollo program, although a few robotic landers and orbiters have been sent to the Moon since that time. The U.S. has committed to return to the moon by 2018.
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