Chinese team finds lunar landslides taking place, triggered by moonquakes

Chinese scientists said they found active landslides taking place on the moon, primarily triggered by moonquakes.

The team said their findings will help to select more stable sites for future lunar bases, as China expands its space exploration ambitions, which include setting up a research station in the lunar south pole region by 2035.

The researchers from Sun Yat‐sen University, Fuzhou University and Shanghai Normal University published their findings in the peer-reviewed National Science Review on September 11. The English-language journal is supervised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“Human civilisation has never been closer to establishing permanent infrastructures on the moon, which will serve as scientific research stations and/or deep-space outposts,” the team wrote.

“While moonquakes were detected during the Apollo missions, conventional geological wisdom posited that lunar endogenic activity had essentially ceased, leaving geological hazard assessments of lunar seismicity largely unexplored.”

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In the new analysis, the team detected 41 new landslides on the moon formed since 2009. They did this by comparing 562 pairs of before and after images of 74 sites in the least stable areas on the moon.

South China Morning Post