Flora Graham, deputy editor, newscientist.com
(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/GSFC)
Twin spacecraft orbiting the moon have created an incredibly detailed map of our companion. In this image, the moon's normally sober appearance has been enhanced with colours to represent variations in its structure - red indicates more massive areas and blue corresponds to less mass.
The two satellites that made the map are called Ebb and Flow, and together they're known as GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory). Precise microwave measurements between Ebb and Flow allowed NASA to build the map from data acquired from March to May this year.
Because the moon lacks an atmosphere, the mapping satellites can orbit very close to the surface, allowing them to create the most detailed gravity map of any body in the solar system. The GOCE satellite working on a similar map of Earth has to stay 10 times further away to avoid atmospheric drag.
As seen in the video below, the far side of the moon appears far more pockmarked because it has more small craters. Researchers hope that this map could reveal whether the Earth once had two moons but lost one when it crashed onto our moon's far side, revealing why the crust is much thicker there.
Twin spacecraft map the mass of the man in the moon
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Twin spacecraft map the mass of the man in the moon
