• Question: what is the moon made of ?

    Asked by to Andrei, Ekbal, Gemma, Helen, Ruth on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ekbal Hussain

      Ekbal Hussain answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Surprisingly, the moon is actually very much like the Earth. Like the Earth it is made of layers and has a crust, mantle and a core. But because it is so small it has lost of its heat and is now pretty much dead.

      We have had a few successful missions to the moon and now have lots of actual moon rocks. These are very much like the rocks we see on earth. They contain minerals with funny names called olivine, pyroxene and feldspar. We see all of these minerals in rocks on Earth too.

      It’s because of this similarity that scientists believe the moon is actually a part of the Earth that got split off from the planet about 3 billion years ago.

      Think of the moon as Earth’s baby. 😀

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