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According to an analysis of images captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), released Monday, the Moon is shrinking regularly, causing wrinkles on its surface and earthquakes.
A study of more than 12,000 images revealed that the Moon Frigoris Lunar Basin, located near the North Pole of the Moon – one of the many large basins considered for a long time as dead sites from a point of view geological – it's cracked and changed.
Unlike our planet, the moon does not have tectonic plates; instead, its tectonic activity occurs because it slowly loses heat since its formation, 4.5 billion years ago.
This in turn causes a wrinkle, similar to a grape that shrivels in grapes.
As the crust of the moon is fragile, these forces cause the surface to rupture when the interior narrows, giving rise to thrust faults, where part of the crust is pushed onto an adjacent part.
As a result, the moon has become "finer" at about 50 meters (50 meters) in the last few hundred million years.
Apollo astronauts began measuring seismic activity on the moon in the 1960s and 1970s, discovering that the vast majority occurred in the depths of the interior of the body, while a smaller number were its surface.
The analysis was published in Nature Geoscience and examined the shallow moonquakes recorded by the Apollo missions, establishing links between them and very young surface elements.
"It is highly likely that the flaws are still active today," said Nicholas Schmerr, an assistant professor of geology at the University of Maryland, co-author of the study.
"You do not often see active tectonics elsewhere than on Earth, so it's very exciting to think that these faults can still produce moonstones."
NASA qualifies $ 1.6 billion for the "Artemis" mission for the moon in 2024
NASA's next mission to the Moon will be christened Artemis, the US Space Agency announced on Monday, although it is still looking for the money needed for the trip to take place by 2024, an accelerated deadline.
In March, the administration of US President Donald Trump advanced four years the date of the next US lunar mission compared to its original goal of 2028, while pledging to send a woman for the first time astronaut on the surface of the moon.
NASA director Jim Bridenstine told reporters that the agency would need an additional $ 1.6 billion to pay for the new land and space vehicles needed to meet the deadline.
"I want to point out that this additional investment is a down payment on NASA's efforts to land humans on the Moon by 2024," he said.
Bridenstine said the mission called Artemis after the Greek mythological goddess of the moon and twin sister of Apollo, named after the program that sent 12 American astronauts to the moon between 1969 and 1972 .
NASA's total annual budget is approximately $ 21.5 billion. In 2019, the agency spent approximately $ 4.5 billion on the development of the Orion Space Shuttle, the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy rocket and the new Lunar Orbital Mini-Station, three essential elements of the Artemis mission.
But many experts and lawmakers worry that NASA may not be able to meet the accelerated deadline, especially because of significant delays in the development of the SLS, built by aerospace giant Boeing.
When asked how much the new mission would cost in total, Bridenstine objected to the situation, telling a reporter: "I would love to tell you that."
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