NASA uses Apollo data to prove that moon has a core

HUNTSVILLE, AL - Using Apollo-era data, a team led by a NASA scientist from Huntsville has found evidence of something long suspected - a core at the center of the moon similar to Earth's core.


The discovery was announced today in the online edition of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.


It's main significance, beyond the value of the science, is setting the stage for a series of planned and potential missions to further study the entire moon.


"We applied tried and true methodologies from terrestrial seismology to this legacy data set to present the first-ever direct detection of the moon's core," explained lead researcher Dr. Renee Weber, a NASA scientist at Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center.


That core consists of a solid, iron-rich inner core with a radius of nearly 150 miles and a fluid, primarily liquid-iron outer core with a radius of roughly 205 miles, researchers said. The core also contains a small percentage of light elements such as sulfur, which is also indicated in the Earth's core by new seismology research.


"The deepest interior of the moon has considerable structural similarities with the Earth," researchers said.


Apollo astronauts left four seismometers on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972, and they recorded lunar seismic activity until late 1977.


The researchers examined years' worth of data about "moon-quakes," which a NASA news release called "seismic shudders possibly caused by the buildup of Earth's tidal forces on and within the moon."


The research team included Marshall Space Flight Center, Arizona State University, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France.