NASA urged to avoid building near lunar faults after moonquake discovery

• New study reveals moonquakes shaped the historic Apollo 17 landing site.
• Active lunar faults challenge plans for permanent Artemis program bases.
• Scientists used boulder tracks as evidence of past seismic activity.
• The moon is still contracting, causing ongoing seismic hazards.
• Future lunar settlements must avoid building near active fault lines.

A new geological detective story, written in moon dust and ancient boulders, is forcing NASA to rethink its blueprints for a permanent lunar foothold. Published in the journal Science Advances, a landmark study reveals that the shifting terrain at the historic Apollo 17 landing site was shaped not by meteoroids, but by repeated moonquakes along an active fault. This finding shatters the illusion of a geologically silent moon and presents a direct challenge to the space agency’s Artemis program, which aims to establish long-term human settlements on our celestial neighbor.

The research, led by Smithsonian senior scientist emeritus Thomas R. Watters and University of Maryland geologist Nicholas Schmerr, turned the clock back 90 million years. By analyzing boulder tracks and landslides documented by astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in 1972, the scientists pieced together a history of seismic activity in the Taurus-Littrow valley. Their work points to the Lee-Lincoln fault, a scar cutting through the valley floor, as the culprit behind magnitude-3.0 quakes that have rocked the region over eons.

Evidence from an ancient landscape

Without modern seismometers on the lunar surface, the team had to become forensic investigators. “We don’t have the sort of strong motion instruments that can measure seismic activity on the moon like we do on Earth,” Schmerr explained. “So we had to look for other ways to evaluate how much ground motion there may have been, like boulder falls and landslides that get mobilized by these seismic events.”

The critical clues came from the Apollo samples themselves. By measuring the rocks’ exposure to cosmic radiation, the team could determine how long ago they were dislodged. The size of the boulders and the distance they traveled allowed researchers to back-calculate the strength of the moonquakes that sent them tumbling. This innovative method has opened a new frontier in lunar paleoseismology.

A moon that is still alive

The conclusion is clear: the moon is not dead. The Lee-Lincoln fault is likely still active today, and it is not alone. “The global distribution of young thrust faults like the Lee-Lincoln fault, their potential to be still active and the potential to form new thrust faults from ongoing contraction should be considered when planning the location and assessing stability of permanent outposts on the moon,” Watters warned.

This activity stems from the moon’s ongoing cooling and contraction, which causes its crust to crack and slip. Unlike brief earthquakes, these lunar tremors can resonate for hours, a sustained shaking that could devastate infrastructure. For the Apollo 17 crew, the immediate risk was vanishingly small. The study calculates the daily odds of a damaging quake near an active fault at just 1 in 20 million.

Calculating risk for the Artemis generation

However, for future colonists planning decade-long stays, the risk profile changes dramatically. “If astronauts are there for a day, they’d just have very bad luck if there was a damaging event,” Schmerr noted. “But if you have a habitat or crewed mission up on the moon for a whole decade, that’s 3,650 days times 1 in 20 million, or the risk of a hazardous moonquake becoming about 1 in 5,500.”

This shift from lottery odds to a plausible poker hand means hazard assessment is no longer academic. Taller landing systems and permanent habitats are more vulnerable to ground shaking. The research delivers a straightforward mandate for mission planners. “The conclusion we came to is: don’t build right on top of a scarp, or recently active fault,” Schmerr said. “The farther away from a scarp, the lesser the hazard.”

This warning arrives as NASA targets the lunar south pole for Artemis landings, a region known to be riddled with similar faults. The agency is already acting on this new knowledge, developing new seismometers like the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station for Artemis III to listen directly to the moon’s rumblings.

The moon, it turns out, has a subtle but powerful voice. After decades of viewing it as a static museum piece, we are now learning to listen to its seismic whispers. The success of our return, and the safety of those who will live and work there, depends on heeding what the ground itself is telling us. The final frontier may be quieter than Earth, but as this research proves, its silence is deceiving.

Sources for this article include:

ScienceDaily.com

SkyAtNightMagazine.com

Science.NASA.gov

EurekAlert.org