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Why Are There Craters on the Side of the Moon Which Faces Earth?

-- Lisa | August 16, 2020

Question:

If the moon only presents the same face how did the craters get there without the bodies that caused them not hitting the earth

-- Lisa

Answer:

The fact that we see the same side of the Moon all of the time does not mean that the Moon does not rotate. The same side of the moon always faces Earth because the moon rotates, or spins on its axis, in the same length of time it takes to orbit the Earth, which is about 27.32 days. This synchronous rotation is a characteristic shared by several moons orbiting other planets in our solar system. Since our Moon does indeed rotate, the impacts that produced the craters that we see are distributed throughout the Moon’s surface.

-- Jeff Mangum

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