Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean finds out just how thick the dust is on the surface of the moon. In this picture he is using a core tube to take soil samples. He is able to push the tube a couple of inches. But the soil was solid and no longer lose. He is shown here using a hammer to beat the tube in the rest of the way to get the sample needed.
Picture provided by NASA. http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/a12_h_49_7286.html
The moon's orbit.
The moon moves about 3,350 feet (1,020 m) each second tangentially (in passing) while falling just 1/16 inch 91.6 mm) toward earth. This combination results in a smooth elliptical (round) orbit. This orbit could be describe as a saw tooth pattern. But being just a 1/16 of an inch, motion back and forth, it's barely noticeable.
Our moon's size.
Our moon is approximately 1/4 the size of the earth. 2,160 miles (3,475 km) is the size of the moon. 7,928 miles (12,756 km) size of the earth. In terms of actual mass, the earth is 81 times heavier than the moon.
Why do we only see one side of the moon?
The moon rotates once on it's axis during the very same time it orbits the earth, 29 1/2 days (actually 29 d., 12 hr., 44 min., 2.98 sec.). As a result, we always see the same side of the moon. The moon also rocks slightly back and forth allowing us to see more than half of it, about 59%. This is called libration.
When we landed on the moon, the belief that the dust was several feet deep had NASA worried that the space craft might sink when it landed on the moon. So they put wide feet on the end of each landing arms as shown in this picture. The space craft did not sink as shown. Which led to another problem shown in next picture.
