New data shows that the power of gravity, which creates terrestrial tides, can lead to earthquakes on a satellite. Information taken from the Apollo mission. During the 12, 14, 15 and 16 missions, the seismometers showed jumps from 800 to 1200 km below the surface, occurring every 27 days. This is the time during which the satellite makes the orbital passage, so suspicions have arisen that the process is created by tidal force.
Seismometers helped examine 131 lunar shake-ups in 1969-1977. The three most active points confirmed the tidal idea. This force causes the terrestrial oceans to bulge on the side turned to the satellite. It ebb. At this time, cracks and defects form on the moon, which causes an earthquake.
Processing old information
In its structure, the moon copies the Earth, but is devoid of tectonic activity, and therefore does not experience the earthquakes that we are used to. But its variety in size reaches 2 or less, but it happens regularly. If an event takes us a couple of minutes, it can take much longer on the satellite. Previously, the data were limited because one of the instruments did not detect lunar activity. Therefore, scientists used the indicators of only one seismometer. The new method combined the signals and helped to track the occurrence of earthquakes, as well as to find the probable cause.
Lunar structure
New evidence suggests that the lunar mantle may be cooler than thought. This corresponds to the tidal stress model. However, we still need more observations to understand how events affect the change in the internal composition and temperature of the satellite.