Mike+and+greg+-+Red+class

=Moon Basics=

By: Mike and Greg

__Moon's History and Origin__
4.6 billion years old Could have been created by collision of Earths and Mars sized object As soon as moon cooled Great showers of rock like particles bombarded moon, large explosions formed large basins, lava flowed into the basins and cooled Meteoroids continue to hit the moon, but lava no longer fills the craters

__Properties of the Moon__
360 degree's/30 days = 12 or 13 degrees/day __Layer Structure__ (based on seismometers on the moon) __Moon's Front and back__ period it orbits once around Earth. Thus the same side always earth
 * Moon is 1/4 - 1/3 of earth's Diameter[[image:moon2.jpg width="288" height="402" align="right"]]
 * Moon's Orbital rate: degrees/time =
 * 1 Moon rotation = 30 days
 * Diameter = 3476 kilometers (more than 1/4 earth's diameter)
 * Density about 3.3 g/cm cubed
 * low gravity (1/6 Earth)
 * low escape velocity (1/5 Earth)
 * Mass is about 1/18 Earth's
 * Crust 60 kilometers
 * Mantle 800 kilometers
 * Moon turns once on it's axis in the same time
 * Galileo thought the basins were filed with water and he named them **maria**
 * back is mostly highlands and craters
 * Moon is slightly egg shaped the small end pointing to earth

__Moon's Surface features__
__Craters__ __Maria__
 * Craters on the moon can range from 1 inche to over 100 miles
 * Craters are formed from meteroids hiting the moon
 * Maria are the large dark smooth plains you see on the moon
 * Astronomers believe these were formed several billion years ago
 * They formed when the moon was just forming and large meteoroids hit the moon and broke through the thin crust
 * Rilles: long deep clefts or cracks running through Maria bedrock
 * Mascons: area of higher gravity

__Lunar Exploration__

 * First Landing on Moon Apollo 11 on July 16 1969 first crewed landing on the moon
 * The first three Apollo missions explored the maria
 * Rock samples showed that the rocks in the maria were simular to basalts in Hawaiian volcanoes
 * Final three Apollo flights landed in lunar highlands



__Sources of info__
There were some notes on the moon on the surface area and we did not do any labs on the moon basics only rotation All are stuff is from chapter 24 in the text book for us pages p.433-443