Unraveling the mystery of the moon, why is it filled with craters?

Look up at the clear night sky. You can see some circular formations on the surface of our neighboring celestial body, the Moon. These are impact craters, which are circular basins that can be found on the surface of the planets.

About a century ago, they were thought to have existed on Earth although their cosmic origin is often suspected and most geologists believe that the crater came from a volcano.

Around 1960, the American astrogeologist Gene Shoemaker, one of the founders of planetary science, studied the dynamics of crater formation on Earth and the planet's surface. He investigates why the planets - including our Moon - are so filled with craters.
Picture from Apollo

In 1970, there were more than 50 craters found on Earth, but the discovery was still considered controversial, until images of the Moon's surface carried by the Apollo missions confirmed that impact craters were a common geological process that took place outside Earth.

Unlike Earth's surface, the Moon's surface is filled with craters. This is because Earth is a dynamic planet, where tectonic earthquakes, volcanoes, winds and oceans counteract the formation of craters on its surface.

That doesn't mean Earth - not even Australia - has never been hit by rocks from space.

Our planet is supposed to be hit by more rocks from space than the Moon has experienced, simply because our planet is bigger.

Unlike Earth, our Moon is inactive for a long geological time span and has no atmosphere, which has allowed impact craters to last for thousands of years. Moon craters record the entire history of collisions that have occurred from the origin of the Moon to the present day.
Big crater

The largest and oldest impact crater in the solar system is believed to be on the Moon, and is called the Aitken South Pole basin, but we can't see it from Earth because it is on the far side of the Moon. The position of the Moon is locked to Earth's rotation so that the same side is always facing us.

However, this crater, which is more than 2,000 kilometers wide, was formed before any other major collisions that occurred during the Moon's evolution. Impact simulations show that the Aitken crater was formed by an asteroid measuring 150-250 km across the Moon at a speed of 15-20 km per second!

From Earth, the human eye can observe a gray area that appears different from the surface of the Moon facing us. Its dark areas are called maria, and can reach more than 1,000 km in width.

The dark areas are volcanic deposits that form indentations created by the massive impact on the Moon. These volcanic eruptions were active for millions of years after these collisions.

My favorite is the Orientale basin, the youngest impact crater on the Moon, but is thought to have formed "only" about 3.7 billion years ago.


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