Moon is shrinking, scientists worried

Reading time: 2 min – Found on Washington Post

The Washington Post explains that over hundreds of millions of years, the moon has been slowly shrinking. And that leads to a moon earthquake—literally. The study of this tremor dates back to the days of the Apollo program. Fifty years ago, astronauts placed seismometers on the side of the moon closest to Earth to record tremors.

The most powerful earthquake ever recorded recently occurred near the South Pole, near the landing point of NASA’s Artemis III mission, which aims to return humans to the planet. In a new study, lunar geologist Tom Waters and colleagues say the powerful earthquakes are linked to a group of active faults caused by the current shrinking Moon.

A small threat to future research

The Washington Post suggests that even if earthquakes are large, they are not very frequent. On average, they occur once every 100 days over the entire surface of Earth’s natural satellite. So it would take a lot of bad luck to get a tremor in the same place where the astronauts would land for a few days.

According to geophysicist Alan Husker, it is still important to guard against this risk. “Future lunar bases must be located away from earthquake sources to avoid damage or built to withstand seismic shocks.Says the expert. If we can map them like we do on Earth, we can avoid them.

Future bases for the Artemis III program could be built on site using 3D printers.