Cool Moon Facts by Whip

Real astronomy and dated history, with sources. Documented traditions and folklore. Modern lunar astrology · symbolic, not predictive.

Fact #190 Strange but true

Nothing orbits the Moon naturally, and nothing could for very long. Anything captured gets pulled apart between Earth's gravity and the Moon's own lumpy field.

The region where the Moon's gravity wins over Earth's stretches about 60,000 kilometres, which sounds roomy, but orbits inside it are wrecked by the mascons and by the Sun and Earth tugging from opposite sides. Even our own spacecraft need active station-keeping or a carefully chosen frozen orbit to last more than a few months.

Source: Ely, Journal of the Astronautical Sciences 53, 301 (2005) · checked Sep 2026

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