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The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite.It orbits at an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 mi), about 30 times the diameter of Earth. Tidal forces between Earth and the Moon have synchronized the Moon's orbital period (lunar month) with its rotation period at 29.5 Earth days, causing the same side of the Moon to always face Earth.
[20] [21] By that time, Earth and the Moon would be in a mutual spin–orbit resonance or tidal locking, in which the Moon will orbit Earth in about 47 days (currently 27 days), and both the Moon and Earth would rotate around their axes in the same time, always facing each other with the same side. This has already happened to the Moon—the ...
Searches for more satellites have been unsuccessful, putting the maximum radius of any other satellites at 90 m (100 yd). [4] Jupiter has 95 moons with known orbits; 72 of them have received permanent designations, and 57 have been named. Its eight regular moons are grouped into the planet-sized Galilean moons and the far smaller Amalthea group ...
Halfway into its 25.5-day uncrewed Artemis 1 mission, NASA’s Orion capsule today recorded a weird kind of Earth-moon eclipse, reached its farthest distance from our planet and began the ...
The seven largest natural satellites in the Solar System (those bigger than 2,500 km across) are Jupiter's Galilean moons (Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa), Saturn's moon Titan, Earth's moon, and Neptune's captured natural satellite Triton. Triton, the smallest of these, has more mass than all smaller natural satellites together.
In 2019, Chang'e-4 was the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the far side of the moon, successfully delivering the robotic rover Yutu-2, or Jade Rabbit in Chinese, to the surface. Yutu ...
In the Solar System, all planets, comets, and asteroids are in such orbits, as are many artificial satellites and pieces of space debris. Moons by contrast are not in a heliocentric orbit but rather orbit their parent object. Geocentric orbit: An orbit around the planet Earth, such as that of the Moon or of artificial satellites.
Called a "mini-moon" of sorts by some, it temporarily entered Earth's orbit on Sept. 29 from the Arjuna asteroid belt, which follows a similar orbital path around the sun as the Earth.