One of the places where NASA wants to put people on the moon is prone to earthquakes, according to American researchers. Or rather: moonquake sensitive.
You probably haven’t noticed yet, but: the moon is shrinking! Okay, it’s doing that very slowly: over the past few hundred million years, its circumference has shrunk by about fifty meters. “And because the moon’s crust has to adapt to that smaller volume, fractures occur,” says Tom Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum in the US.
These fractures are also around the South Pole, where NASA wants to place people later this decade. Watters and colleagues have now subjected that area to further examination in images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. In total they recorded fifteen fractions – and of those turns out to be one to be close to a landing site that NASA is considering.
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Very rare
And that is not just a break, if we can believe Watters and his team. According to them, it is plausible that the most powerful moonquake ever recorded was caused by this rupture. And he could do something like that again in the future.
So is it wise to choose a different place for the upcoming landing on the moon? Not necessarily. “These types of moonquakes are very rare,” says Watters. The chance that astronauts will be hopping around there when one happens is therefore minimal. But you don’t want to put a moon base there, for example. “The longer you stay there, the greater the chance of a moonquake.”
Impacts on the edge
Valentin Bickel, a planetary geomorphologist at the Center for Space and Habitability at the University of Bern, points out that changes to the moon’s surface usually appear to have causes other than moonquakes. “For example, the vast majority of rock that rolled into Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole is due to recent impacts on the crater rim.”
Sources: The Planetary Science Journal, University of Maryland
Beeld: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
2024-02-08 08:00:10
#Shrinking #moon #leads #tremors
