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2 days ago · The Moon is a 4.5-billion-year-old time capsule, pristinely preserved by the cold vacuum of space. It is a witness to billions of years of solar activity and large collisions that allowed life to gain a foothold in the solar system.
18 hours ago · The Moon is Earth 's only natural satellite. It orbits at an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 mi), about 30 times the diameter of Earth. Tidal forces between Earth and the Moon have synchronized the Moon's orbital period (lunar month) with its rotation period (lunar day) at 29.5 Earth days, causing the same side of the Moon to always ...
1 day ago · It is a spherical rocky body, probably with a small metallic core, revolving around Earth in a slightly eccentric orbit at a mean distance of about 384,000 km (238,600 miles). Its equatorial radius is 1,738 km (1,080 miles). Because of the Moon’s small size and mass, its surface gravity is only about one-sixth of Earth’s.
- James D. Burke
3 days ago · “We have made fantastic progress on our technology to separate the Moon’s regolith, or surface-level materials, and the next natural step will be to see how it will operate under lunar gravity conditions,” says Dr. Daoru Han, an S&T associate professor of aerospace engineering and the project’s principal investigator.
3 days ago · Lunar Gravity Simulation via Suborbital Rocket. Sixteen technologies are expected to fly aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard reusable suborbital rocket system on an upcoming flight test. The flight will provide more than two minutes of simulated lunar gravity, allowing researchers to test and de-risk innovations that could address critical ...
1 day ago · The Moon has also been visited by five spacecraft not dedicated to studying it; four of these spacecraft have flown past for the purpose of gravity assistance, and a radio telescope, Explorer 49, was placed into selenocentric orbit in order to use the Moon to block interference from terrestrial radio sources.
4 days ago · The English physicist Isaac Newton used lunar observations in developing his theory of gravitation in the late 17th century, and he was able to show some effects of solar gravity in perturbing the Moon’s motion.
