Moon Is Getting Farther Away From Earth Each Year, Report Finds

Moon is getting farther away from Earth each year, report finds

A report from Space Daily says the moon is receding from Earth at 3.8 centimetres per year.

The Apollo astronauts left behind retroreflectors on the lunar surface that scientists still bounce lasers off today, and the round-trip time has been measured precisely enough to prove the Moon is drifting away from Earth at 3.8 centimeters per year, abo

On a clear night at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, a 3.5-meter telescope fires a pulse of green laser light at the Moon. The beam, after traveling roughly 384,400 kilometers, strikes a suitcase-sized panel of cube-corner mirrors that has been sitting in the lunar dust since the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. A handful of photons bounce back. Two and a half seconds after the pulse left Earth, a detector catches them. From that round-trip…