Hypothesis: The moon is still seismically active

Five seismometers placed on the Moon by the Apollo 11-16 missions detected 28 lunar earthquakes during

between 1960 and 1970, which, as thenthought to have been caused by friction at tectonic faults. These seismic events shook the surface of the Earth's satellite with a magnitude of 2 to 5 on the Earth's scale.

The team of scientists working on the newresearch, has created an algorithm that allowed to accurately determine the epicenters of these lunar earthquakes. The refined data on the location of the Apollo times was then superimposed on the images obtained by the LRO.

As a result, researchers found that eight lunar earthquakes have epicenters within 31 km of geological formations, called jerk faults.

We assume that those eight jerks that wediscovered in the data from the Apollo, were generated as a result of rock formation shifts at the moment when tidal forces acted on the moon, and the crust accumulated a sufficient amount of energy as a result of its cooling and compression. This suggests that the moon is still "alive" in terms of tectonics.

Thomas Watters, lead author of the study

Previously, NASA has published a new "color"photos of the satellite Mars - Phobos. Pictures can help scientists determine whether an object is an asteroid pulled by a gravitational field of Mars, or formed from debris as a result of the collision of the Red Planet with another cosmic body.