Moon Shrinkage Causing Massive Quaking: What It Means for Space Exploration

Swiss cheese moon? More like a raisin. According to new data and images, the Earth’s moon is cooling, causing it to lose 150 feet in circumference over the past few hundred million years as it slowly shrinks like a grape into a raisin. Discovery of the shrinkage was published in The Planetary Science Journal after a team of scientists linked a group of faults located on the moon’s south polar region to the most potent moonquakes recorded in the past 50 years. Between 1969 and 1977, researchers recorded 28 moonquakes ranging in magnitude from 1.5 to 5, had they been earthquakes. Moonquakes still occur today, with certain areas especially vulnerable to landslides and seismic shaking....