Saturday, 8 December 2012

Huge cracks on the Moon

Ebb and Flow, the twin spacecraft that comprise NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, have created a gravity map and other analyses of the moon, and it seems that it is riven by deep cracks. The gravity map reveals an abundance of features never before seen in detail, such as tectonic structures, volcanic landforms, basin rings, crater central peaks and numerous simple, bowl-shaped craters. The map also reveals evidence for fracturing of the interior extending to the deep crust and possibly the mantle. The Moon's crust has an average thickness of between 21 and 27 miles (34 and 43 kilometres), which is about 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 kilometres) thinner than previously thought.

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