How the Moon Got its Fault Scarps: Moonquakes and the Lunar Surface

The Moon is known for its varied landscape; impact craters dot its surface, many with picturesque rays extending from them across the highlands, and so-called mare, or basalt "oceans", cover the lowlands. But one aspect of lunar geography that captured scientists' interest early is the presence of fault scarps, short clifflike structures zigzagging across the surface of the Moon. Like the much larger-scale mountain ranges that characterize the joining of two tectonic plates on Earth, these featu...