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Internal Structure/Mantle Motions of the Moon

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Encyclopedia of Lunar Science

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Over the years since the Apollo era, the current lunar interior structure has been investigated using seismic, gravity, and magnetic field data. The Apollo seismic network recorded about 1,800 meteoroid impacts, 28 energetic shallow moonquakes (with body wave magnitudes up to five and hypocenters about 100 km below the surface), and about 7,000 extremely weak deep moonquakes that were located about halfway to the center of the Moon (e.g., Wieczorek 2009). The deep moonquakes are very enigmatic in that their occurrences are correlated with the tides raised by the Earth, they involve very low stress drops (less than 1 bar), they appear to originate from about 300 “nests” that are repeatedly activated, and almost all of these nests are located on the Moon’s nearside hemisphere (Nakamura 2003; Bulow et al. 2007; Qin et al. 2012). The nearside distribution of the deep moonquakes could perhaps indicate that the farside hemisphere is seismically inactive. Such a hypothesis is possible,...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geological Science, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Brown University, Providence, 02913, RI, USA

    Nan Zhang

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Correspondence to Nan Zhang .

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  1. Prairie View A&M University, Houston, Texas, USA

    Brian Cudnik

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Zhang, N. (2014). Internal Structure/Mantle Motions of the Moon. In: Cudnik, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Lunar Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05546-6_10-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05546-6_10-1

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