You must be over the age of Privacy notice. Smart cookie preferences. Change cookie preferences Accept all cookies. Skip to content. Read later. You don't have any saved articles. By Kerry Lotzof. A few theories 'There used to be a number of theories about how the Moon was made and it was one of the aims of the Apollo program to figure out how we got to have our Moon,' says Sara.
Prior to the Apollo mission research there were three theories about how the Moon formed. Lunar meteorite Dar al Gani Apollo mission evidence The Apollo missions brought back over a third of a tonne of rock and soil from the Moon.
A lunar landscape showing the Antoniadi Crater near the Moon's south pole. Lunar landscapes The mineralogy of Earth and the Moon are so close that it's possible to observe Moon-like landscapes without jetting off into space.
By looking at the Moon we can tell a lot about what the Earth was like four billion years ago. A balancing influence Having a moon as large as ours is something that's unique in our solar system. Infancy: Differentiation — Like all terrestrial planetary bodies, the Moon underwent a process of differentiation early in its history. Its bulk settled into layers: the heavier iron sank, forming a small core.
The Moon's oldest rocks likely formed in an ocean of liquid rock — a magma ocean. When the Moon formed, it was enveloped by a deep ocean of molten rock. Credit: Lunar and Planetary Institute. Differentiation within the magma ocean produced the features we still see on the Moon today. The uppermost part of the Moon's crust is mainly the rock anorthosite, which forms the "lunar highlands," the brighter, light-colored, heavily cratered regions we see on the Moon. For more information see the exhibit Our Molten Moon.
Young Moon: Big Impacts Form Big Basins —For the first million years of its existence, large asteroids and comets continued to strike the Moon and the planets in our solar system — including Earth. These impacts are recorded as the largest gouges on the Moon, including the large circles that were later filled in with darker rock. By about 3. Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope to study Pluto found four more small moons. Eris, another dwarf planet even more distant than Pluto, has a small moon of its own, named Dysnomia.
Haumea, another dwarf planet, has two satellites, Hi'iaka and Namaka. Ceres, the closest dwarf planet to the Sun, has no moons. Scientists weren't sure if asteroids could hold moons in their orbits until the Galileo spacecraft flew past asteroid Ida in Images revealed a tiny moon, later named Dactyl. Read More. This page showcases our resources for those interested in learning more about Saturn and Titan.
Saturn and Titan Resources. NASA scientists are calling for a framework that provides context for findings related to the search for life. Are We Alone in the Universe? JPL's lucky peanuts are an unofficial tradition at big mission events. Hubble observations of Europa have revealed the presence of persistent water vapor — but, mysteriously, only in one hemisphere.
Full Moon Guide: October - November The rover will be delivered to the Moon's surface in late One explanation is that Theia and the early Earth must have had an identical composition to start with. That seems unlikely because every documented planetary body in our solar system has their own unique composition, with slight differences reflecting the distance from the sun where a body formed.
Another explanation is that the mixing of the two bodies was much more thorough than anticipated, leaving a less clear signature of Theia in the Moon. But that is also unlikely, as it would require a much larger impact than the one that actually took place.
The researchers looked with very high precision at the distribution of isotopes of the element oxygen in rocks returned from the Moon by the Apollo astronauts. This is important. The crust is where mixed debris would have ended up, whereas the deep interior would have more bits of Theia. But the results also teach us a bit more about Theia itself.
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