Extensional grabens in our shrinking Moon

The largest of the observed grabens with the
 Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the LRO spacecraft. 
It is about 500 m wide, and nearly 20 m deep. 
(Credit: NASA/Goddard /
 Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution)

Who has not read a thousand times that our Moon is a death body without any activity? Well, it turns to be the opposite: The Moon has been active at least until very recent times, and very likely this activity continues now.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has obtained images of the surface of our satellite where extensional faults are clearly visible. NASA estimates that this faults are not older than 150 million years, which is pretty young for what we expected to be the lunar tectonics.

Two years ago, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission also detected other young geological features, which where interpretd as compressional uplifts. It was said, at that time, that the Moon is shriking. But the identification of extensional faults shows that this shrinking (due to thermal contractions) is not homogeneus everywhere.


But why not listening directly to Tom Watters from the Smithsonian Institution? (You can also active the subtitles!):

Diagram of formation of a graben with two bounding faults (Credit: Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution)

Read more here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/lunar-graben.html