搜索结果：Moonquakes

The Taurus-Littrow valley offers a unique opportunity to analyze surface changes due to seismic activity on the lunar surface. Ground acceleration from moonquakes has triggered landslides and boulder falls in the valley. The formation and growth of the Lee-Lincoln thrust fault is a likely source of the moonquakes. Here, we estimate the ground acceleration and quake magnitude for four boulders and one landslide: all sampled by Apollo 17 astronauts. These features all have exposure ages that establish the approximate timing of the moonquakes. Our analysis suggests that the structural relief of the Lee-Lincoln fault scarp is the result of multiple coseismic slip events with a minimum body wave magnitude Mw of ~2.9 to 3.3. The formation and growth of thousands of such globally distributed young thrust faults, through multiple coseismic events, suggest that the Moon has a history of widespread strong shallow moonquakes. Shallow moonquakes from likely active faults may pose a potential hazard to long-term outposts.

Mass wasting of slope materials is a fundamental surface process on the Moon, yet its current activity and geohazard risks remain unconstrained. Here, we analyse multi-temporal images for terrains representing the least stable areas on the Moon, revealing new landslides formed in the past 15 years. The new landslides are superficial and small in size, displacing materials that are significantly less than 105 m3 in volume. With localized occurrences, new landslides may pose limited hazards to future surface explorations, except for slope-proximal facilities and operations. Without a clear genetic relationship with thermal weathering of exposed crystalline rocks, ∼29% of the new landslides were likely triggered by new impact events, but the efficiency is comparatively smaller than that of endogenic seismic activity. Most new landslides were likely induced by endogenic moonquakes and they display distinct spatial clustering in the east of the Imbrium Basin, implying heterogeneous distributions of seismic zones in the lunar interior.

Ground-based monitoring of seismicity and modulation by external forces in the field of planetary seismology remains equivocal due to the lack of natural observations. Constrained by the natural observations (including Earthquakes, Moonquakes, and Marsquakes) and theoretical models, we present the variation in gravitational acceleration "g" of different solar system objects, combined with external harmonic forcings that are responsible for seismicity modulation on the planetary bodies and their natural satellites. From the global diversity in seismicity modulation, it has been observed that the plate-boundary regions on the Earth exhibit both short and long-period seismicity modulation. In contrast, the stable plate interior regions appear to be more sensitive to long-period seismicity modulation, however, lacking in short-period modulation. The deep Moonquakes are susceptible for both the lunar tidal period (13.6 days and 27 days) and long-period pole wobble modulation (206 days), whereas shallow emergent type moonquakes show a seismic periodicity at the lunation period (29.5 days). Further, the seasonal variation with an annual seismicity burst and seismic periodicity at polar wobble periods for high-frequency Marsquakes captured by InSight lander indicate a natural origin. Whereas diurnal and semi-diurnal periodicity along with Phobos' tidal period, indicate possible artifacts due to different detection probabilities and non-seismic noise in the Martian environment. We argue that, in the context of rate-state-dependent fault friction, the gravity-induced resonance destabilization model appears to be better agreement with the contrast and relative diversity in seismicity modulation linked to the Earth, Moon, and Mars.

The Moon undergoes periodic tidal forcing due to its eccentric and oblique orbit around the Earth1. The response to this tidal interaction drives temporal changes in the lunar gravity field and is sensitive to the satellite's internal structure2-4. We use data from the NASA GRAIL spacecraft5-9 to recover the time-varying lunar gravity field, including a degree-3 gravitational tidal Love number, k3. Here, we report our estimated value of k3 = 0.0163 ± 0.0007, which is about 72% higher than that expected for a spherically symmetric moon10. Such a large k3 can be explained if the elastic shear modulus of the mantle varies by about 2-3% between the nearside and farside4, providing an observational demonstration of lateral heterogeneities in the deep lunar interior. This asymmetric structure suggests preservation of a predominantly thermal anomaly of roughly 100-200 K in the nearside mantle that formed surface mare regions 3-4 billion years ago11 and could influence the spatial distribution of deep moonquakes12.

Unusually long reverberations were recorded from two lunar impacts by a seismic station installed on the lunar surface by the Apollo 12 astronauts. Seismic data from these impacts suggest that the lunar mare in the region of the Apollo 12 landing site consists of material with very low seismic velocities near the surface, with velocity increasing with depth to 5 to 6 kilometers per second (for compressional waves) at a depth of 20 kilometers. Absorption of seismic waves in this structure is extremely low relative to typical continental crustal materials on earth. It is unlikely that a major boundary similar to the crustmantle interface on earth exists in the outer 20 kilometers of the moon. A combination of dispersion and scattering of surface waves probably explains the lunar seismic reverberation. Scattering of these waves implies the presence of heterogeneity within the outer zone of the mare on a scale of from several hundred meters (or less) to several kilometers. Seismic signals from 160 events of natural origin have been recorded during the first 7 months of operation of the Apollo 12 seismic station. At least 26 of the natural events are small moonquakes. Many of the natural events are thought to be meteoroid impacts.

Samples of material returned from the Moon have established that widespread lunar volcanism ceased about 3.2 Gyr ago. Crater statistics and degradation models indicate that last-gasp eruptions of thin basalt flows continued until less than 1.0 Gyr ago, but the Moon is now considered to be unaffected by internal processes today, other than weak tidally driven moonquakes and young fault systems. It is therefore widely assumed that only impact craters have reshaped the lunar landscape over the past billion years. Here we report that patches of the lunar regolith in the Ina structure were recently removed. The preservation state of relief, the number of superimposed small craters, and the 'freshness' (spectral maturity) of the regolith together indicate that features within this structure must be as young as 10 Myr, and perhaps are still forming today. We propose that these features result from recent, episodic out-gassing from deep within the Moon. Such out-gassing probably contributed to the radiogenic gases detected during past lunar missions. Future monitoring (including Earth-based observations) should reveal the composition of the gas, yielding important clues to volatiles archived at great depth over the past 4-4.5 Gyr.

Seismometer operation for 21 days at Tranquillity Base revealed, among strong signals produced by the Apollo 11 lunar module descent stage, a small proportion of probable natural seismic signals. The latter are long-duration, emergent oscillations which lack the discrete phases and coherence of earthquake signals. From similarity with the impact signal of the Apollo 12 ascent stage, they are thought to be produced by meteoroid impacts or shallow moonquakes. This signal character may imply transmission with high Q and intense wave scattering, conditions which are mutually exclusive on earth. Natural background noise is very much smaller than on earth, and lunar tectonism may be very low.

The Chang'e-7 (CE-7) mission will deploy the first seismometer at the lunar south pole to detect moonquakes and probe lunar interior structures in 2026 winter. However, the lander's vibration response to the extreme temperature cycles of the polar environment remains unclear, complicating the analysis of noise sources in seismic records. Here, we developed a high-fidelity finite-element model of the CE-7 lander to characterize its resonant behavior under the coupled influence of solar panel rotation and extreme thermal variations. Numerical results reveal that the lander's fundamental frequency (~0.76 Hz) at room temperature drifts significantly between 0.64 Hz and 0.87 Hz when the outside temperature varies from -180 to +80 °C. This frequency drift is primarily driven by thermally induced stiffness changes in the solar array supporting bracket, whereas geometric reconfiguration due to rotation plays a secondary role. Crucially, this resonance band directly overlaps with the primary seismic observation window (usually <1.0 Hz). Sensitivity analysis further confirms that the fundamental mode remains structurally robust despite material property uncertainties. These findings estab

Global seismicity on all three solar system's bodies with in situ measurements (Earth, Moon, and Mars) is due mainly to mechanical Rieger resonance (RR) of the solar wind's macroscopic flapping, driven by the well-known PRg=~154-day Rieger period and detected commonly in most heliophysical data types and the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). Thus, InSight mission marsquakes rates are periodic with PRg as characterized by a very high (>>12) fidelity Φ=2.8 10^6 and by being the only >99%-significant spectral peak in the 385.8-64.3-nHz (1-180-day) band of highest planetary energies; the longest-span (v.9) release of raw data revealed the entire RR, excluding a tectonically active Mars. For check, I analyze rates of Oct 2015-Feb 2019, Mw5.6+ earthquakes, and all (1969-1977) Apollo mission moonquakes. To decouple magnetosphere and IMF effects, I study Earth and Moon seismicity during traversals of Earth magnetotail vs. IMF. The analysis showed with >99-67% confidence and Φ>>12 fidelity that (an unspecified majority of) moonquakes and Mw5.6+ earthquakes also recur at Rieger periods. About half of spectral peaks split but also into clusters that average to usual Riege

Parameterised by the Love number $k_2$ and the tidal quality factor $Q$, and inferred from lunar laser ranging (LLR), tidal dissipation in the Moon follows an unexpected frequency dependence often interpreted as evidence for a highly dissipative, melt-bearing layer encompassing the core-mantle boundary. Within this, more or less standard interpretation, the basal layer's viscosity is required to be of order $10^{15}$ to $10^{16}$ Pa s, and its outer radius is predicted to extend to the zone of deep moonquakes. While the reconciliation of those predictions with the mechanical properties of rocks might be challenging, alternative lunar interior models without the basal layer are said to be unable to fit the frequency dependence of tidal $Q$. The purpose of our paper is to illustrate under what conditions the frequency-dependence of lunar tidal $Q$ can be interpreted without the need for deep-seated partial melt. Devising a simplified lunar model, in which the mantle is described by the Sundberg-Cooper rheology, we predict the relaxation strength and characteristic timescale of elastically-accommodated grain boundary sliding in the mantle that would give rise to the desired frequency

The applicability of the linear theory of elasticity to the Moon has been studied. As a criterion was taken the smallness of the strain tensor. The elastic moduli are obtained from the data of the project "Apollo". The pressure was calculated in the framework of the model of a homogeneous solid sphere under the action of its own gravity. The strain tensor trace is of the order $0.02$, which indicates the applicability. The strain tensor in the body of the Moon is calculated taking into account the self-gravity and the Earth's tidal potential. Respectively the free energy density is calculated. Since the axis of the Moon rotation has its own non-zero declination to the ecliptic plane, the tidal potential variations take place during the rotation of the Moon around the Earth. The estimation of the corresponding free energy density variations are made. Their dependence on the depth exhibit qualitative agreement with the data of depth dependence in the energy of deep moonquakes obtained in the project "Apollo." Integral estimations of variations in the free energy for the year shows that it is many orders of magnitude greater than estimates of energy for the year of deep moonquakes ene

Herein the transient lunar phenomena (TLP) report database is subjected to a discriminating statistical filter robust against sites of spurious reports, and produces a restricted sample that may be largely reliable. This subset is highly correlated geographically with the catalog of outgassing events seen by the Apollo 15, 16 and Lunar Prospector alpha-particle spectrometers for episodic Rn-222 gas release. Both this robust TLP sample and even the larger, unfiltered sample are highly correlated with the boundary between mare and highlands, as are both deep and shallow moonquakes, as well as Po-210, a long-lived product of Rn-222 decay and a further tracer of outgassing. This offers another significant correlation relating TLPs and outgassing, and may tie some of this activity to sagging mare basalt plains (perhaps mascons). Additionally, low-level but likely significant TLP activity is connected to recent, major impact craters (while moonquakes are not), which may indicate the effects of cracks caused by the impacts, or perhaps avalanches, allowing release of gas. The majority of TLP (and Rn-222) activity, however, is confined to one site that produced much of the basalt in the Pro

Trump's DOJ says citizens should no longer be able to enforce environmental laws

Europa’s hidden ocean has made the icy moon one of the solar system’s most promising places to search for habitable conditions。 Scientists have hoped that water from this deep ocean might rise through cracks and form shallow reservoirs that future spacecraft could more easily study。 New simulations suggest that journey is unlikely because turbulent

Top scores increased by 5x

“We do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets,” the ChatGPT maker says