Sometimes when you look at the moon, you see a face smiling down at you from the moon surface. Of course, this is an illusion, but many people see it, and that’s because its surface is shaped by some sort of lunar seas and highlands. From our point of view, we see these as light and dark patches. These seas are dark parts and large hardened lava planes formed because of volcanic eruptions that happened a long, long time ago. The light regions are actually the mountains in the highlands. And people all around the globe see these lunar patches as a smiling face or even some other shapes. Our brain tends to play with things of this nature. And that’s a phenomenon called paridolia.
It’s when you see familiar faces and shapes even though they’re not actually there, similar to how you can see a face in a slice of toast or shapes while watching the clouds. And in the northern hemisphere, people see a face in those different lunar seas. The eyes are the sea of serenity and rain. The sea of clouds represents his mouth, while the seas of islands and vapors form his nose. But that’s just one way to interpret this picture. And that mostly works in the northern hemisphere. If you live in the southern hemisphere, you see in the moon the other way up. When they look at the moon, some see a person that looks like they’re carrying a bundle of sticks or there’s the shape of a woman.
She wears her hair up and it has two jewels in it and they see the left side of her face in profile. One of the craters is reminiscent of a shining diamond which it seems she’s wearing around her neck. In some places, people may see the shape of a rabbit, whereas people from the Pacific Northwest in America even have a story about the toad they see when looking at the moon. The story says there was a wolf that fell in love with a toad, and the toad didn’t quite trust the wolf since it wanted to escape and didn’t know where. It simply made one huge leap and landed on the moon. Now, do other planets have beautiful rainbows like we do? The ingredients for that are raindrops and sunlight.
At the moment, we don’t know of a planet with liquid water on its surface, and none have enough water in their atmosphere to make it rain, but droplets of some other liquid could refract light coming from the sun and spread it out into various colors. Titan is one of Saturn’s moons, and the atmosphere there is rich in droplets of liquid methane, which probably form rain. The atmosphere on Titan is very hazy. That means that direct sunlight is not that common, but there’s still a slight chance we could catch methane rainbows someday. If they really exist, they’d be similar to rainbows on Earth, but they’d be a bit broader because methane refracts light differently than water. There’s a similar thing on Venus called glory. Scientists caught pictures of this optical phenomenon of sunlight falling on sulfuric acid droplets, similar to a rainbow.
Jupiter is insanely big, around 11 times wider than Earth. Not only that, our planet is twice as small as its great red spot, the raging storm that’s been present on the planet for more than a century now. We owe Jupiter a lot. Its radiation is a thousand times stronger than the lethal level for us, and the gravitational force is so powerful that it actually protects our planet from collisions. In some other planetary systems, giant planets like Jupiter can move around and migrate from the place where they were originally formed. They spiral inward and get closer to their stars. When they move around, they can cause a lot of trouble. When they get closer to their stars, they can swallow and destroy some innocent small planets or other celestial bodies that stand in their way.
But if these giants remain far away from their stars, they serve as guardians of the planetary system. They protect the planets in the inner orbits and allow them to circle around a central star. Jupiter got the nickname vacuum cleaner of the solar system because it can eat up any comet or asteroid that comes close enough. It can also change their orbits and kick them out so they can’t come back for a very, very long time. That way, Jupiter protects the inner planets, although sometimes it accidentally sends asteroids or comets into them, causing collisions, like maybe the one that made the dinosaurs extinct 65 million years ago. Now, Saturn’s rings are the most famous ones in our solar system. They are farreaching, colorful, and highly visible. You can even see them using a backyard telescope.
But some other ice and gas giants also have them, too, like Uranus. It has the second most interesting set of rings in our solar system. There are 13 rings and they’re all made of very dark particles that are different sizes. They’re most likely young, way younger than Uranus itself. When theory says high-speed impact shattered one or more moons, and this may have been the matter these rings are formed of, there were way more particles of debris, but only some survived and today are forming stable zones around Uranus known as rings. Now, our planet lost 60% of its atmosphere when there was an asteroid impact that, as one theory says, probably created the moon. The collision between Earth and a Mars-sized rock happened over 4 billion years ago. The debris from all that collected in an orbit around our planet eventually formed the moon.
Now, Venus is home to at least 37 volcanoes that were active recently, which is the first evidence that showed its interior is still geologically active. Previous research discovered that the planet’s interior was warm. Plus, there were ring-like structures. Plumes of extremely hot material deep inside Venus rise through the mantle layer, and that’s how these structures form. It’s like how plumes form the volcanic areas of the Hawaiian Islands. But scientists think they were just a result of some ancient activities. They believe Venus has cooled enough and drastically slowed down geological activities in its interior by hardening the crust so much that all of the warm materials from deep inside can’t get out to the surface. Speaking of volcanic eruptions, Jupiter’s moon Io also has them.
Our moon is pretty peaceful, but Io has hundreds of volcanoes, and it took the title of the most active moon in our solar system when it comes to volcanoes. If you could go there, you’d see plumes of sulfur that reach up to 190 m into its atmosphere. Volcanoes there emit one ton of particles and gases into space near Jupiter, its parent planet, every second. This could be because Jupiter’s strong magnetic field and gravitational force. Io’s interior tenses up and relaxes as it orbits Jupiter and gets closer to it and farther away from it, which generates huge amounts of energy, enough for volcanic activity. There are billions of comets in our solar system. Most of them are in the or cloud and the Kyper belt. A comet generally consists of rock and ice, at least until it gets closer to the sun.
Then its exterior turns into a cloud of dust and gas. And that’s why comets have their specific tails. Pluto’s unique surface is a series of domes, peaks, and troughs on the planet’s landscape, which may have been formed because of its many large ice volcanoes. Neither erosion nor some other geological activity has done that much, but its ice volcanoes actually push icy material up to the surface. There are also a couple of craters in this area of the hemisphere called New Horizons. Asteroid impacts probably caused these. Plus, these craters aren’t that geologically old. Also, the interior of Pluto probably retained heat, which enabled matter rich in water and ice to deposit onto the surface.
And those specific structures I mentioned before could have formed because the water was rising up from the interior of the planet and ended up being rapidly frozen because temperatures on Pluto are extremely low in addition to atmospheric pressures. Uranus is the second least dense planet in our solar system. The least dense one is Saturn. Now, even though Saturn is 14 1/2 times as massive as our planet, it’s still less dense than water. This means that Saturn would float in a pool if it was more than 37,000 mi wide. So, the planet would have enough space to even be in there. Wa, that’s a big pool. Now, back to Uranus. Since its density level is so low, you probably experience less than 90% of its gravity, assuming you could even set foot on its cloud tops. Now, Mars has pretty crazy dust storms.
The biggest ones in our solar system, actually. They can blanket the whole planet and last for months. One theory says these huge storms start because dust particles absorb sunlight and warm the atmosphere of the red planet. Warm pockets of air form and they start flowing toward colder areas. This generates winds. These powerful winds lift more and more dust off the ground. This again heats the planet’s atmosphere, creates more wind, and kicks up even more dust. Wow. Better have a broom handy. Maybe even two. You might think high-tech telescopes let us see every inch of the moon, but that’s not true. At our satellite south pole lie giant craters untouched by sunlight for eons, stuck in pitch black, colder than Pluto, and almost impossible to explore.
However, maybe we have to if we want to explore a space because the darkness hides some must-have resources that will make life and long-d distanceance travel in space possible. Yes, we’re talking about water locked up as tiny crystals in the lunar soil. Now, water in space is always good news. You’ve probably heard that scientists are also obsessed with finding it on Mars. If the red planet has any type of water below its surface, it raises the exciting possibility that life might have existed there. Even microbes would be the biggest discovery in human history. That’s why rovers are poking around Martian craters and drilling into the soil like some very dedicated space gardeners. But as incredible as water on Mars would be, water on the moon might be even more valuable to us in the short term. The reasons are simple.
The distance and the gravity of the moon. We can reach our satellite in 3 days. That’s almost nothing. It takes at least 7 days to reach New York from London via a cruise ship. But more important than the length of the trip is the possibility of using the moon as a pit stop. Stop, refuel, and relaunch so we can resume exploration. The gravity on the moon is only 16 as strong as Earth’s. That’s not just useful for endlessly entertaining yourself by jumping around. This difference means that launching rockets from our satellite is much easier compared to launching them from Earth, which requires a tremendous amount of fuel just to break free from the atmosphere. For example, the Saturn 5 rocket, which took astronauts to the moon during the Apollo missions, was made up of more than 90% fuel just to get off the ground.
On the moon, however, it’s much easier to launch a rocket. That means that we could carry heavier loads with less fuel. It’s like being able to take a bigger suitcase on your trip. If we can find and use ice on the moon to create rocket fuel, it would turn our satellite into a practical and affordable stop for exploring the solar system. Not to mention that by applying some basic chemistry, we could extract oxygen from water and use it for breathing or rocket engines. Also, astronauts would need water to drink and grow crops on the lunar base. So, what do we know about the latest discoveries? For a long time, scientists thought the moon was completely dry. But in 2009, NASA basically crashed a rocket into a crater.
It caused an explosion of ice and vapor like fireworks and finally confirmed that the moon had some kind of water. But how much? Well, enough to matter. The data suggests there could be hundreds of millions of tons of water ice locked up in the moon’s polar regions. Some estimates roughly say 1. 3 trillion lb. That’s about the same weight as 460 million cars. Not exactly lakes, but still a lot. And there still could be more. This water could also contribute to uncovering cool scientific secrets. The ice is ancient, which makes it like a time capsule from the early days of the solar system. Studying those frozen molecules might tell us not only how water got to the moon, but also how it appeared on Earth. Anyway, what’s all that water doing on the moon? How did it get there?
Scientists assumed that some of it probably hitched a ride on comets and asteroids billions of years ago. Many of those space rocks carried ice and some of that water ended up in the polar regions. Another source could be the way solar wind interacts with the lunar surface. In any case, however this ice appeared on the moon, the real trick is where it ended up inside its polar craters. And while we can find the ice not only in the craters at the South Pole, that’s where the largest, most stable reserves are believed to be. Some of those craters are enormous. One of the most famous is called the Shackleton Crater, and it’s over 13 mi wide and more than 2 mi deep. That’s almost twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.
The moon barely tilts on its axis, only about 1°, so the sun never peaks over the rims of those deep polar pits. The temperatures dip to around -400° F there. Any water or chemicals trapped in that frozen dirt just stay there, locked away like in a freezer. Something really cool is that at the South Pole, you have parts that are stuck in the perpetual darkness. But some nearby mountain ridges get almost nonstop sunlight. Scientists call them the peaks of eternal light. They are perfect for setting up solar panels while still being close enough to access the icy treasures hidden below. The poles of the moon are the only places in our solar system we know of where perpetual day and night exist side by side. But the eternal night isn’t just fascinating, it’s dangerous. The terrain out there is absolutely unforgiving.
We can’t even simulate something like that on Earth. We don’t even know what it looks like from the inside. It’s worse than exploring the northernmost part of Antarctica while wearing a blindfold. So, now that we know this, is that potential water even obtainable? That question is probably worth several trillions of dollars. Yes, there’s water over there, but getting to it won’t be like scooping ice cream from a bowl. What we’re really talking about are microscopic ice crystals mixed into lunar dust. To make use of it, machines would need to dig and heat up the soil, then capture the vapor before it escapes back into space. And then there’s freezing. Even assuming a human or rover could safely reach the bottom of a crater, it’d be almost impossible to navigate. batteries and equipment probably wouldn’t last. And it’s impossible to use solar panels or electronics down there.
They’d freeze in minutes. However, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter uses all kinds of radars and sensors to sniff out what the crater looks like inside. And now there’s an even sharper tool, Shadow Cam. A camera so sensitive it can capture details in light 100 times dimmer than what our eyes can see. Basically, the ultimate night vision device. With it, we can finally map those pits without even setting foot there. That’s why engineers are thinking up all sorts of clever solutions. Some concepts involve nuclearpowered rovers with headlights strong enough to carve through the dark. Others want robots that repel down crater walls or hop across the floor like pogo sticks. There are even ideas for drills that could melt frozen soil and trap water vapor like condensation on a cold soda can. The silver lining is that this water isn’t going anywhere.
Until we improve our technology, the supply will wait for us. That being said, space agencies are already making advancements. In fact, more than half a dozen new missions are lined up over the next few years. NASA’s Aremis program is getting ready to send astronauts back around the moon and then down to the South Pole. China’s Chong A7 is planning to check out those dark craters. And private companies like Firefly and Blue Origin are gearing up to deliver equipment and experiments. Now, here’s a bonus, lesserk known fun fact. The moon smells. When Apollo astronauts brought lunar dust into their landers, it mixed with the oxygen inside and ended up smelling pretty strong. They said it was like burnt gunpowder or fireworks. Lunar dust has nothing to do with gunpowder, but its particles are highly reactive.
After sitting in space for billions of years, they reacted instantly with oxygen in the cabin, creating that smoky odor. Future explorers are definitely going to notice that smell, too, since lunar dust tends to stick to everything. Let’s hope that aside from everything else, scientists will work out air fresheners for the moon base. Under your feet, the moon is pulsing. You feel danger with every pore of your body. The lifeless satellite, or so you thought, stays still for a second before knocking you down to the ground with a powerful tremor. Is it a moonquake? For years, scientists believed the moon was completely inactive. But the newest evidence seems to suggest that this idea is totally wrong. Researchers from the University of Maryland have recently discovered 266 mysterious ridges on the far side of the moon. And these ridges likely point to recent geological activity.
So, are we really talking moonquakes? Well, kind of. The ridges are located in volcanic regions that formed 3. 2 to 3. 6 billion years ago, but they appear much younger than expected. Typically found in clusters of 10 to 40, they’re often located in areas where the moon’s surface is structurally weaker. Now, when astronomers speak about recent, don’t take their words literally. They don’t mean last year or even decade. Most models scientists created suggested that the moon’s geological activity ended 2. 5 to 3 billion years ago. But the new information hints at the possibility that these formations have been active within the last billion years. Some of the smaller ridges seem to have formed as recently as 200 million years ago. And that is considered relatively young on the moon’s time scale. It means that the moon may still be experiencing geological changes today.
These discoveries kind of challenge our understanding of the moon’s history and evolution. But how did scientists come to these conclusions anyway? Researchers from the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Institution used crater counting to estimate the age of lunar ridges. It works like this. Surfaces with fewer craters are younger. And the more craters some region has, the older it is. Plus, the analysis showed that some ridges cut through already existing craters, meaning they likely formed around 160 million years ago. In geological terms, this is very recent, suggesting that these ridge forming processes may still be happening. Another cool thing is that the ridges on both the near and far sides of the moon are similar, which means they may have formed through the same geological processes, having been shaped by the same forces.
These forces might include the moon’s gradual shrinking, thermal contraction, and shifts in its orbit. We’ll talk about it a bit later. Another argument supporting the idea of a still active moon is decades old data from the Apollo missions. They had already detected shallow moon quakes with the Apollo lunar seismic experiment recording 28 quakes ranging from magnitude 1. 5 to 5. Researchers believe that these ridges may be linked to similar seismic activity. Now about that bizarre shrinking of our natural satellite. Scientists believe the moon formed about 4. 5 billion years ago when a Mars-sized object collided with early Earth. This catastrophic impact likely sent bunches of superheated material into space. Eventually, they came together and formed the moon. In its early years, the moon was just a molten world shaking from intense volcanic and seismic activity.
So, the moon used to be a molten mess floating through space. But when did it actually solidify? Scientists have finally figured it out. 4. 43 billion years ago. This was a huge turning point, not just for the moon, but for Earth, too. After all, the giant impact that formed the moon might have also been the final blow that made Earth stable enough to support life. In any case, billions of years passed. The moon gradually cooled and contracted. And now look at this modern-day rocky sphere illuminating our nights. But the moon isn’t completely rigid yet. It still keeps cooling. And this slow cooling of its core might be one possible reason for the moon’s continued activity. As it cools, the moon’s interior contracts, which leads to cracks and shifts in the crust. One of the clearest signs of this contraction is found in the lunar maria.
See these large dark patches on the moon? Those are called maria areas formed when lava filled ancient asteroid impact craters and then solidified. Then over time, the cooling and contracting crust created these wrinkle ridges. Another factor of the ongoing geological activity could be the moon’s gravitational interactions with Earth. Such non-stop powerful interactions likely create surface stress and trigger tectonic movements. It’s all good and exciting, but can this activity on the moon actually affect humans? In a sense, it can. The moon has long been seen as a stable place for future bases and resource extraction. But the discovery of this ongoing geological activity is pretty worrying. If the surface is still shifting, future settlements, infrastructure, and mining operations could face serious risks. That’s why at the moment we need seismometers and ground penetrating radars to better understand these movements.
It will allow us to assess potential dangers before any long-term missions begin. By the way, there’s another potential problem future lunar missions might have to deal with, and it’s moon dust, aka regalith. Apollo astronauts quickly learned that this jagged, sticky dust gets everywhere and can damage suits, equipment, and even health. A new study from Texas A&M engineers found another problem. When rockets land or take off, they kick up regalith, which can become a collision hazard, especially with many spacecraft bringing crews and cargo to the moon. Lunar regalith comes in all sizes from tiny dust particles to large rocks. The main ingredient in moond dust is fine silicut materials about 70 microns in size like a human hair. They formed over billions of years as meteors and asteroids smashed into the moon’s surface, grinding much of it into powder. Unlike Earth, the moon has almost no atmosphere.
It’s incredibly thin, so there’s no wind or water to smooth out the dust. On top of that, constant exposure to solar wind has given the regalith an electrostatic charge, making it stick to anything it touches. Apollo astronauts quickly found this out the hard way. Moon dust clung to their suits, got trapped inside their landers, and stuck to everything. Worse, it became a health hazard, causing eye irritation and breathing problems inside their spacecraft. But at the moment, it seems like a problem for future US. A much more important issue is finding water to support future missions, and China is going to deal with it. It’s getting ready for a big mission to look for hidden ice on the moon. As part of the Chong E7 mission in 2026, a flying robot will explore deep craters at the moon’s south pole where ice might be trapped.
If they manage to confirm it, this could be a gamecher for future lunar missions. Astronauts will have a water source and even fuel for space travel. The mission is a key step in China’s plan to land astronauts on the moon within 5 years. While signs of water have been found before, like in soil samples from Chong E5’s probe and observations by NASA and Indian spacecraft, scientists believe that deep ice deposits are the real key to supporting future missions. The south pole of the moon has some incredibly deep craters, and experts think ice could be hiding inside them. The flying robot will try to explore one or more of these craters after landing. If it does find the ice, it could make long-term moon missions much cheaper and more practical, helping astronauts live and work on the moon.
Some scientists also think that this discovery could offer us some clues about extraterrestrial life. In any case, whether we find water on the moon and learn to deal with that pesky dust or not, the recent discovery of those young lunar ridges is a gamecher. If the moon is still geologically active, it means we don’t know as much about our closest neighbor as we thought. What else could the moon be hiding? Are we really prepared for the idea that this lifeless satellite might actually be more dynamic than we imagined? Future missions, which might not be as safe as we once believed, will probably show. This catapult-like system on the moon might bring us limitless energy. It’s a launch system concept that was recently proposed by the Chinese scientists. It would work like a hammer throw, spinning a launch arm that flings objects.
This arm is supposed to be about 165 ft long. It will accelerate until it reaches the moon’s escape velocity and then whoosh, the capsule is sent into space. This crazy idea will cost around $18 billion. Oo, pricey, but trust me, it’s totally going to be worth it. The system would be powered by solar panels and nuclear energy. It could also recover more than 70% of the energy used after each launch. The moon has a very weak gravity. There’s also barely any atmosphere, so the air doesn’t weigh you down. This makes it so much easier to launch stuff there. But why do we even need this? The main purpose is to transport helium 3. It’s a really cool isotope of helium. And one of the most insane things about it is that it could become fuel for nuclear fishision.
This is the same process that happens in stars, including our sun. If we manage to recreate nuclear fusion here on Earth, we can make it a clean and basically limitless source of energy for power plants. But helium 3 is super rare on Earth. We can sometimes find it in volcanic rock formations on the ocean floor. That’s because it’s a product of another rare element called tridium, the element we usually make in nuclear reactors and put in cool stuff like glow-in-the-dark paint. But the catch of tridium is that it takes forever to decay and turn into helium 3. Now, there’s a bunch of helium 3 on the moon, around 1 million tons. Just 20 tons of helium 3 could meet China’s yearly electricity needs. In fact, lunar soil has enough helium 3 to power the entire world for over a thousand years.
But why is there so much of helium 3 on the moon and barely none on our planet? Well, that’s because helium 3 comes from the sun and travels in solar winds. Solar winds are like streams of dangerous particles. They’re super radioactive. Our planet’s thick atmosphere and magnetic fields serve as a shield for us. They almost fully protect us from those particles. But unfortunately, they also prevent the good stuff like helium 3 from getting here. The moon’s atmospheric shields are super thin, though, so it’s under a constant shower of solar winds. So helium 3 accumulated there over billions of years and now it’s just scattered around there. But mining it and bringing back to Earth is no easy feat. It’s super expensive. Just think about it. Rockets need tons of fuel to break free from gravity.
Every single bolt and screw on the spacecraft must be engineered to survive extreme conditions like radiation. Not to mention, you need a team of rocket scientists. literally working around the clock to make sure nothing goes wrong. You can’t call a repair guy if something breaks on the moon. So, generally, it costs about a half a million dollars to send one pound of payload to our satellite. That’s based on estimates from NASA. To get some idea, let’s calculate how much it would cost to send an apple to the moon. A typical apple weighs about 0. 4 lb. So, that funny mission would be at least $200,000. Now, for comparison, the Chinese launch system weighs around 80 tons. Another problem is that the lunar surface is pretty harsh on the equipment, like the freakish lunar dust, for example.
You might recall this small thing that happened in the 60s called the moon landings. But when the Apollo astronauts came back from the moon, they found something weird was happening to them. Their throats were sore and their eyes watered. Luckily, it wasn’t some scary moon sickness. Turns out there’s a lot of lunar dust clinging to their spac suits. This dust seems harmless, but it’s made up of sharp and abrasive particles, much smaller than a human hair, yet sharp like glass. It contains silicut, a thing that can cause severe lung problems on Earth, and is a common issue for miners. So, it caused a lunar hay fever. At least that’s how NASA astronaut Harrison Schmidt called it. All 12 astronauts who walked on the moon were then sneezing and experiencing nasal congestion. Sometimes it took days to fade away.
The dust even got inside their spacecraft smelling like burnt gunpowder. This nasty stuff can be harmful to both humans and equipment. It managed to damage spacuit boots and even ruin the seals on the containers used to bring back samples during the Apollo missions. As we mentioned, they’re glass sharp and jagged, so they start scratching, grinding, and wearing down any surfaces they come in contact with. They don’t care if it’s metal, glass, or humans. And since there’s so much dust, this causes equipment to malfunction and fail quite quickly. And that’s just one of the possible hurdles with lunar missions. So, scientists really need to come up with some weird ideas to get that precious helium 3. The Chinese scientist project looks like a weird sci-fi invention, but it’s a cost-effective way to transport materials back to us.
It could throw stuff to Earth twice a day, and it would be 90% cheaper than current methods. Since it only needs electricity and no fuel, the system would be small and easy to set up. Besides the beloved Helium 3, this catapult would also help advanced technologies in space mining and heavy launch vehicles. No lunar dust scares this thing. It should last for at least 20 years. It would need to be transported to the moon using China’s super heavy lift rocket. But the idea is far from new. There was a novel called The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinland. In the story, there’s a lunar colony that uses an electromagnetic catapult to send weed and water ice back to Earth. It gets quite wild when the colonists, known as loonies, eventually take control of this catapult.
They threaten to launch rocks at Earth unless their colony is recognized as an independent world. Sounds kind of funny, but a large rock, if thrown at us from the moon, could wipe out a city. The damage would be like from a meteorite strike with fires, houses destroyed, and worse. But scientists have been talking about this catapult idea for a while. For decades, they were trying to find a way to use electromagnetic systems to send resources from the moon to Earth. There are also some challenges. For example, scientists forgot to mention how exactly helium 3 would be extracted from the lunar soil. Installing this launch system on the moon’s rugged surface would be difficult as well. Also, they would need to make sure that the system remains stable at high speeds and that it could withstand the moon’s extreme temperature changes, cosmic rays, and intense solar radiation.
So, it would take some time to develop. China hopes to have the key components of the system ready by 2030. The full-scale operations might start by 2045. China has tons of plans for the moon. For example, they want to build a research station at its south pole by 2035. But China’s not the only one in this space race. Considering that NASA plans to send humans on Mars by that time, oh boy, the 2030s will be a crazy decade for space exploration. There’s also an American startup that’s part of the lunar economy. The ones that plan to land astronauts on the moon have people actually living on our satellite in a decade or two. One of the goals of this colony is to boost economic growth and create new jobs. Most of them will likely involve some mining activities.
And if there’d be two space colonies, well, they’ll have to figure something out. There’s something happening inside the moon. Something that nobody expected. Not a dramatic shift you’d see on the outside, but deep down where things seem frozen in time. Scientists have uncovered a hidden layer of what you could only call moon goo. Remember those school lessons about the crust, mantle, and core? Much like the Earth, the moon is made up of layers, a crust, mantle, and core. However, the moon’s core is much smaller compared to ours. Earth’s core is huge. It makes up about a third of our entire planet’s mass. The moon’s core makes up only about 1 to 2% of its mass and its diameter is about 1/5 the diameter of the moon itself. It’s surrounded by a hard rocky mantle.
But it turns out that between these two layers, that mysterious goo layer, and it’s way more important than you might think. The layer is soft and partially molten, ebbing and flowing like the tides in our oceans. It rises and falls, stretching and shifting as if it were alive. Its movement isn’t chaotic, but subtle and regular. We always knew that the moon influences our seas and oceans, causing tides with its gravity. But it turns out that we influence it back. The goo ocean reacts to the gravitational dance between Earth and the sun. Also, the molten layer could be made of ilmanite, a very intriguing material. Ilmanite is rich in titanium, a strong and lightweight metal that we really love over here on Earth. Titanium is used in everything from airplane parts and spacecraft to medical devices, even in everyday items like bikes and laptops.
All because it’s incredibly strong and very resistant to corrosion and heat. So, if the moon might have a molten layer rich in ilmanite, that would be awesome. Astronomers are already planning for lunar bases. And if we had a material to build structures, spacecraft, or even tools for astronauts right there, that would be a gamecher. Otherwise, we’d need to transport materials from Earth, which is extremely costly. This is our first tangible sign that the moon is not just a cold, boring rock. Instead, it’s dynamic, living, and breathing with moving forces beneath the surface. NASA used new special tools to discover this. The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. These are both space missions designed to study the moon. But they don’t just look at the surface like a telescope.
Instead, they help measure things we can’t see with our eyes, like the moon’s gravity and how it changes over time. Grail sent two small spacecraft around the moon named Eb and Flow. Clever. The idea was for these spacecraft to fly close to each other and measure tiny differences in the moon’s gravity as they go. It’s like they were feeling the moon’s invisible pull in different places. If the moon’s gravity was stronger in one spot, the spacecraft move closer together, and if it was weaker, they move farther apart. This helps scientists understand what’s going on inside the moon, even if they can’t actually go there. and the spacecraft intentionally crashed into the moon in December 2012 to end the mission. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is a bit different. It takes superdetailed pictures of the moon and collects other important information about its surface.
By combining the information from both Grail and LRO, we were able to find this goo layer. But this discovery actually challenges everything we thought we knew about lunar geology. How did this molten layer get there? How long has it existed? And perhaps more fascinating, how it stayed warm for millions of years. That’s some million-dollar questions. The moon’s core generates heat just like ours. But it’s not as easy as saying, “Oh, the core’s heat probably keeps it warm and molten. ” Well, first, the moon’s core is much smaller and less active than Earth’s, meaning it produces significantly less heat. Plus, the moon is much cooler than Earth in general. With temperature dropping to minus200° Fahrenheit on the surface, how could this inner layer still stay in this flowing state? That’s still a mystery.
In any case, this goo could actually explain a lot of stuff about the moon. For example, astronomers were exploring moon quakes and how they happen. Now, they think that it might be this semi molten layer shifting and moving beneath the surface. Now, beyond the moon itself, it also tells us more about other celestial bodies. If the moon, something we considered basically a huge static rock, has such a dramatic life, what about other planets, moons, or asteroids? Could they also hide similar hidden movements beneath their surfaces? We can even understand our own planet better, learn more about how tides and similar stuff works. There are so many great discoveries we’ve been making on the moon. Recently, we found some awesome stuff beneath the surface. Massive caves hidden for millions of years.
For over 50 years, scientists have suspected that the moon’s surface is full of underground tunnels and caves. These are known as lava tubes because they were formed by lava. Duh. Millions of years ago, the moon was pretty unstable. It underwent some volcanic activity causing eruptions. When a volcano erupts, lava can flow across the surface. As the outer layer of the lava cools and hardens, it forms a solid roof of dark material. It’s actually what these famous dark spots on the moon are. These are dark, hardened remains of ancient lava. But the hot molten lava continues to flow through the center. Once the eruption ends and the lava drains away, what’s left behind is an empty hollow tunnel, hence a lava tube. On Earth, we have lava tubes in places like Hawaii or Iceland, where volcanic activity has created similar underground tunnels.
The same thing happened on the moon billions of years ago, although they’re much crazier compared to ours. In fact, lunar lava tubes are now thought to be some of the largest and longest in the entire solar system. One such cave was discovered beneath the famous Mar Tranquilus, the place where Apollo 11 first landed, and it’s at least 340 ft deep. Now, all these lava systems have remained hidden just beneath the surface, untouched for millions of years. Only now, they finally managed to prove their existence. Scientists from the University of Trento in Italy found them using special radar technology and advanced computer methods. These techniques let you see underground by sending radar waves. The waves bounce back and give clues about what’s hidden underneath. By analyzing the way these waves reflected back, the researchers could detect the shape and size of the hidden caves.
Now, the best thing about this discovery is that we could build all our bases there. These caves protect from radiation, harsh winds, and meteoroids. NASA even found evidence that some of these caves stay at a steady 63° F. That’s some crazy coziness for the moon. And on top of that, there could even be some water there. So, humans could take shelter inside these natural tunnels and build entire colonies on the moon. And I know what you’re thinking. Could unexpected lunar monsters hide deep in those caves? Well, sure. There’s a huge potential for exploring these caves and finding some awesome stuff. But even if we manage to find a miracle like small life or microbial organisms, there’s a 99% chance that there won’t be actual animals or monsters. It would just be impossible for them to develop in such conditions.
But it would make a great horror movie. Researchers want to send robots or drones to explore the tunnels first and then see if they’re safe enough for humans. And it’s not just the US getting in on the action. China is also investigating the possibility of using these moon caves as a future base, showing that the race to explore and settle the moon is heating up. Something unusual has been spotted on the moon, and it’s getting attention for a reason. New highresolution observations linked to NASA’s Aremis program revealed areas where the lunar surface appears to have shifted, cracked, or partially collapsed. In some images, it even looks like a section of the moon has broken away. At first glance, this sounds extreme. The moon is usually described as geologically inactive, a stable and unchanging world. But the data tells a different story.
Certain regions now show surface features that were not clearly visible in older imagery, suggesting relatively recent changes. The key to understanding this lies in how the moon actually evolves. Even without plate tectonics like Earth, the moon is still slowly changing. One of the main reasons is temperature. The lunar surface experiences extreme swings from about our 120° bic during the day to 130° bise at night. These rapid changes cause the surface material to expand and contract over and over again, gradually weakening rock structures. Over time, this leads to cracking. Another major factor is the moon’s internal cooling. As the moon slowly loses heat, its interior contracts. This process creates stress in the crust, forming features known as lobate scarps, which are essentially small cliffs or fault lines. Data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has identified thousands of these structures, some stretching for several kilome.
What makes them important is their age. Many of these scarps appear relatively young, which suggests the moon is still tectonically active on a small scale. There is also direct evidence of seismic activity. Instruments left on the surface during the Apollo missions recorded moon quakes with magnitudes up to about 5. 0. These are strong enough to shift surface material, especially in areas where the ground is already unstable. Recent analysis shows that some of these lunar faults may have been active within the last 50 million years, which is extremely recent in geological terms. In some regions, boulders up to several meters in size have been observed at the base of cliffs, likely dislodged by seismic activity. Computer models suggest that even a moderate moonquake could trigger cascading rockfalls across unstable slopes, especially near the lunar poles where future missions are planned.
