Watch Out for Moon Quakes!

NASA astronauts are going back to the moon and when they get there they may need quake-proof housing. That's the surprising conclusion of Clive R. Neal, associate professor of civil engineering and geological sciences at the University of Notre Dame after he and a team of 15 other planetary scientists reexamined Apollo data from the 1970s. "The moon is seismically active," he told a gathering of scientists at NASA's Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) meeting in …

…pole. Neal and his colleagues are developing a proposal to deploy a network of 10 to 12 seismometers around the entire moon, to gather data for at least three to five years. This kind of work is necessary, Neal believes, to find the safest spots for permanent lunar bases. And that's just the beginning, he says. Other planets may be shaking, too: "The moon is a technology test bed for establishing such networks on Mars and beyond."