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Moon map reveals deeply fractured crust


This gravity field map of the Moon regions of higher local gravity in red and areas of lower local gravity in blue (Source: NASA/ARC/MIT)

Cracked up Asteroids and comets colliding with the Moon not only pitted its surface but also severely fractured its crust, say NASA researchers, in a finding that could help crack a Martian puzzle.


"Mars might have had an ancient ocean and we're all wondering where it went. Well, that ocean could well be underground," says planetary scientist Maria Zuber, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told reporters at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.

The discovery that the Moon's crust is deeply fractured came from a pair of small probes that comprise NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, mission. The identical spacecraft have been following each other around the Moon for nearly a year.

Scientists have been monitoring the distance between the two, which changes slightly as they fly over denser regions of the Moon. Their findings will be published in this week's edition of the journal Science.


The data, assembled into the first detailed gravity maps of the Moon, reveal that asteroids and comets cratered the surface and fractured the crust, possibly all the way down to the mantle.

"If you look at the surface of the Moon and how heavily cratered it is, all terrestrial planets look that way, including the Earth," says Zuber, the lead GRAIL scientist.






Tags: astronomy-space, spacecraft, the-moon