NASA: 'Protective BFF' Moon 'always had Earth's back', shielded planet from solar storms

NASA called the moon as Earth’s “protective BFF” for guarding its early atmosphere against powerful solar storms with magnetic fields, eventually helping the Blue planet to develop life and habitable conditions. In a post that NASA shared on its official Twitter handle, NASA called the Earth’s moon as its long-standing shield against the unpredictability of space. 

“The Moon seems to have presented a substantial protective barrier against the solar wind for the Earth, which was critical to Earth’s ability to maintain its atmosphere during this time,” Jim Green, NASA’s chief scientist and lead author of the new study published in Science Advances said.

Further, NASA’s chief scientist added that the scientists will explore the findings further after the space agency NASA sends astronauts to the Moon via Artemis program. The critical samples will be collected from the lunar South Pole. According to NASA the moon has been protecting the Earth since it formed some 4.5 billion years ago, from the Theia that induced into Earth’s photo which was approximately 100 million years old. The celestial object stabilized the Earth’s spin axis, which was spinning at a speed that lasted a day for only  5 hours. With its gravity, the moon then pulled the oceans and became “tidally locked” with Earth. 

[The Earth and Moon, shown here in a composite of two images from the Galileo mission of the 1990s, have a long shared history. Billions of years ago, they had connected magnetic fields. Credits: NASA/JPL/USGS]

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Shielding Earth from harmful radiation

“Moon’s magnetic field serves as a shield causing electrical charges to move along its invisible lines,” scientists at NASA said in a release. Further, they added that initially moon’s long-lasting global magnetic field was undiscovered but the Apollo missions samples showed that the moon had a magnetosphere that kept iron flowing deep inside its surface.

“Moon’s magnetosphere would have served as a barrier to the harsh solar radiation raining down on the Earth-Moon system,” NASA revealed in a release.

[When the Moon had a magnetic field, it would have been shielded from the incoming solar wind, as shown in this illustration. Credits: NASA]

[This illustration shows magnetic field lines that Earth generates today. The Moon no longer has a magnetic field. Credits: NASA]

In a computer model that the astronauts created, it was found that the moon’s magnetospheres connected with Earth’s polar region that blocked the high-energy solar wind particles which could have otherwise destroyed the atmosphere. And hence, the moon led to the evolution of Earth. “If our Moon played a role in shielding our planet from harmful radiation during a critical early time, then in a similar way, there may be other moons around terrestrial exoplanets in the galaxy that help preserve atmospheres for their host planets,” NASA suggested. 

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