The 2008 Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has since confirmed the existence of surface water ice, using the on-board Moon Mineralogy Mapper. The surface is protected by a layer, a few centimeters of dry soil that can only be breached by large micrometeoroids.

The Guardian Not all there | Books | The Guardian

The isotopic equalization of the Earth-Moon system might be explained by the post-impact mixing of the vaporized material that formed the two, [52] although this is debated. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places.The data revealed the distinct reflective signatures of water-ice, as opposed to dust and other reflective substances. These maria formed when large impacts on the far side of the Moon heated up low lying layers of its crust on the near side. Gravitational capture of a pre-formed Moon [42] depends on an unfeasibly extended atmosphere of Earth to dissipate the energy of the passing Moon.

The Moon | Natural History Museum The Moon | Natural History Museum

This atmosphere, sourced from gases ejected from lunar volcanic eruptions, was twice the thickness of that of present-day Mars. Michael Antman of PopMatters asserted that The Almost Moon is "vastly more resonant and real than the fairy tale that made her name". At its very centre, the Moon has a solid iron core with a temperature of between 1,327°C and 1427°C. The Moon is a differentiated body that was initially in hydrostatic equilibrium but has since departed from this condition.We use cook ies to give you the best online experience and to show personalised content and marketing. This illumination of different lunar areas, as viewed from Earth, produces the different lunar phases during the synodic month. These extreme conditions for example are considered to make it unlikely for spacecraft to harbor bacterial spores at the Moon longer than just one lunar orbit. Elements that have been detected include sodium and potassium, produced by sputtering (also found in the atmospheres of Mercury and Io); helium-4 and neon [90] from the solar wind; and argon-40, radon-222, and polonium-210, outgassed after their creation by radioactive decay within the crust and mantle.

The Almost Moon: A Novel - Alice Sebold - Google Books

The English adjective pertaining to the Moon is "lunar", derived from the Latin word for the Moon, lūna. While the minor-planet moon Charon of the Pluto-Charon system is larger relative to Pluto, [f] [66] the Moon is the largest natural satellite of the Solar System relative to their primary planets.Beneath the finely comminuted regolith layer is the megaregolith, a layer of highly fractured bedrock many kilometers thick. The Moon is, beside when passing through Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse, always illuminated by the Sun, but from Earth the visible illumination shifts during its orbit, producing the lunar phases. The Moon's mass is 1/81 of Earth's, [68] being the second densest among the planetary moons, and having the second highest surface gravity, after Io, at 0. It is made of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, and aluminum, with small amounts of titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium, and hydrogen. Parts of many craters, particularly the bottoms of many polar craters, [104] are permanently shadowed, these " craters of eternal darkness" have extremely low temperatures.

Moon - BBC Bitesize The Moon - BBC Bitesize

The thin atmosphere on the Moon has meant that the impact craters have remained prominent - because the Moon has no weather there is effectively no erosion on the celestial body. Because of the lack of atmosphere, temperatures of different areas vary particularly upon whether they are in sunlight or shadow, [102] making topographical details play a decisive role on local surface temperatures. The Almost Moon builds on The Lovely Bones the way that the earlier novel (narrated from heaven by a 14-year-old rape and murder victim) built on Lucky, Sebold's rape memoir.Isotope dating of lunar samples suggests the Moon formed around 50million years after the origin of the Solar System.