Gravity on the Moon vs. Asteroid Bennu: Animation

  • Released Thursday, July 7, 2022
View full credits

The lunar surface is better at resisting impacts than the loose surface of asteroid Bennu – thanks to the Moon’s much stronger gravity.

Asteroid Bennu is a dark, jumbled mass of rocks and boulders left over from the formation of the solar system. Roughly the height of a skyscraper, Bennu’s loose surface materials are held together by an incredibly weak gravitational field – with a minute tug less than one-hundred-thousandth the pull of Earth. What would it be like to touch down on such an environment?

On the Moon, gravity is sixteen percent as strong as it is on Earth and more than sixteen thousand times stronger than it is on Bennu. As a result, loose material in the lunar subsurface is packed together more tightly, making the Moon’s surface relatively firm. If a fifty-kilogram mass of solid iron were to hit the Moon traveling at ten centimeters per second, it would sink into the ground by only half a centimeter.

Repeating this experiment at Bennu would yield a dramatically different result. Though the mass would strike the asteroid’s surface with the same force, it would plunge seventeen centimeters before stopping – over thirty times deeper than at the Moon.

Learn more about the surface properties of asteroid Bennu.

For More Information

See https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

This page was originally published on Thursday, July 7, 2022.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 11:44 AM EDT.

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions: