Sometimes I look up at the Moon and wish I could just throw a lasso around it and pull it a little closer.
But fortunately for everyone living on Earth, no one's made a lasso that's 384,000 kilometers long.
That's roughly how far away the Moon is from Earth.
So other than gravity, or the occasional lunar eclipse, it's hard to picture the Earth having an effect on its long distance partner.
But it turns out, the Earth is forcing chemical reactions to happen on the lunar surface.
Our planet is making the Moon rust.
Now, when I say "rust", I'm not talking about the flaky red stuff you can find on the underside of a 1983 Buick.
It's still a kind of iron oxide, meaning it's made up of iron and oxygen atoms.
But this lunar rust is actually a mineral that goes by the name hematite.
And when hematite was discovered on the Moon back in 2020, it caused a big stir.
