Size and Distance
The moon is less than a third of the Earth. The radius of the moon is 1,079.6 miles. The moon is farther away from the Earth than people think. It is an average of 238,855 miles away. An example is 30 Earths could fit in-between. The moon is actually getting farther away every year about an inch a year.
Orbit and Rotation
The moon is rotating at the same rate that it revolves around Earth (called synchronous rotation), so the same hemisphere faces Earth all the time. That why you never see the dark side of the moon. The moon makes a complete orbit around Earth in 27 Earth days and rotates or spins at that same rate, or in that same amount of time.
Formation …show more content…
The newly formed moon was in a molten state, but within about 100 million years, most of the global "magma ocean" had crystallized, with less-dense rocks floating upward and eventually forming the lunar crust. Now impacts of other asteroids and stuff have hit the moon and created the craters.
Structure
Earth’s moon has a core, mantle and crust. The solid, iron-rich inner core is 149 miles in radius. It is surrounded by a liquid iron shell 56 miles thick. The crust has a thickness of about 43 miles on the moon's near-side hemisphere and 93 miles on the far-side. It is made of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium and aluminum, with small amounts of titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium and