What is Moon’s surface?

The Moon’s surface is like a giant sandbox that has been played in for billions of years.

Imagine you have a big box full of sand, and every time something heavy lands on it or rolls across it, it leaves marks, some are smooth, others are bumpy. The Moon's surface looks just like that: it has craters, which are like the holes left when rocks from space hit it hard; it has mountains, which look like big piles of sand pushed up by a giant hand; and it has valleys, which are like the paths between those mountains.

The Moon's surface is covered in dust, not the kind you find at home, but tiny grains that have been kicked around by billions of years of impacts from rocks and other space objects. This dust is called regolith, and it’s like a layer of fine sand covering everything.

Sometimes, when the Sun shines on the Moon, parts of its surface get really hot, as hot as an oven! Other times, when the Sun goes away, it gets super cold, like being in a freezer. It’s kind of like having two seasons at once, but on the Moon!