LRO Camera Captures Physical Contraction on Lunar Surface
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) camera captures physical contraction on Lunar surface. This leads lunar researchers into hypothetical conclusion that Moon is still active until today.
NASA’s press release reads:
“A team of researchers analyzing high-resolution images obtained by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) show small, narrow trenches typically much longer than they are wide. This indicates the lunar crust is being pulled apart at these locations. These linear valleys, known as graben, form when the moon’s crust stretches, breaks and drops down along two bounding faults. A handful of these graben systems have been found across the lunar surface.”
NASA’s press release reads:
“A team of researchers analyzing high-resolution images obtained by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) show small, narrow trenches typically much longer than they are wide. This indicates the lunar crust is being pulled apart at these locations. These linear valleys, known as graben, form when the moon’s crust stretches, breaks and drops down along two bounding faults. A handful of these graben systems have been found across the lunar surface.”
AS cited on NASA’s press release, Dr. Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies in Washington says:
“We think the moon is in a general state of global contraction because of cooling of a still hot interior. The graben tell us forces acting to shrink the moon were overcome in places by forces acting to pull it apart. This means the contractional forces shrinking the moon cannot be large, or the small graben might never form.”
Watters is also lead author of a paper on this research appearing in the March issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. Here is Dr. Thomas Watters, in a video (uploaded by NASAExplorer), discuss about the lunar garben:
Back in 2010, the release refers; the team used LROC images to identify physical signs of contraction on the lunar surface—in the form of lobe-shaped cliffs known as lobate scarps. The scarps are evidence the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today.
The graben were an unexpected discovery and the images provide contradictory evidence that the regions of the lunar crust are also being pulled apart. Richard Vondrak (LRO Project Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt) says:
“This pulling apart tells us the moon is still active. LRO gives us a detailed look at that process.”
(Via: “NASA Spacecraft Reveals Recent Geological Activity on the Moon” by NASA)
