It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s a super moon and you can see it tonight!
What is a super moon? Well according to Dr. Alex Young, NASA scientist, when the moon is closest to the earth and there’s also a full moon, it’s what’s called a super moon.
The last time we had a super moon was 1948 so they don’t happen very often.
Young says the moon is 14% larger and 30% brighter tonight than usual so it will be really easy to see with the naked eye.
He says NASA has a spacecraft called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that has been orbiting the moon for seven years.
Young says the ultimate goal is to map the surface of the moon, find out what it’s made of and understand its characteristics.
"One of the things we came to discover is that it’s much more dynamic and changing than we thought. And what I mean by that is we look at the moon and we see these craters that have been there for millions of years from things hitting the moon. But we expected there also ones still hitting the moon and occasionally creating new craters and changing the surface but we thought that was a much longer process.”
Young says over the past seven years, NASA has observed these impacts and craters appearing. He says it means the surface of the moon is changing hundreds of times faster than they expected.
Originally, scientists thought the footprints from the Apollo landing would be there for millions of years but now they realize it will be more like thousands of years.
For more information on the super moon event and the moon mission, the website isNASA.gov/LRO.