Twelve people have walked on it, and nobody has dug deeper than three metres. Fall past Apollo's orbit onto the dust, then down through 1,737 kilometres of rock to the Moon's small iron heart.
For this trip you are indestructible. Nothing can hurt you. As you fall, we will tell you what a real body would be going through.
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110 km above the ground
Apollo spacecraft circled about here, 110 km above the grey ground.
On Christmas Eve 1968, Bill Anders of Apollo 8 looked up from this orbit and saw Earth rising over the Moon's horizon. His photo, Earthrise, is one of the most famous ever taken.
A real body: No air at all, ever. The sky is black even in full sunlight.
10 km above the ground
Near the poles, the Sun only ever skims the horizon. Some crater floors haven't seen sunlight in billions of years.
They're among the coldest places in the solar system, below −240 °C, and they hold water ice. That's why NASA's Artemis missions are aiming for the south pole.
A real body: Still no air, and in those shadows it's colder than the surface of Pluto.
0 km down
You land in grey dust, as fine as flour and as sharp as broken glass. Astronauts said it smelled like spent gunpowder.
Twelve people walked here between 1969 and 1972. Buzz Aldrin called the view "magnificent desolation". With no wind or rain, their footprints should last millions of years.
One day here lasts about a month on Earth: two weeks of sunshine, then two weeks of night.
A real body: No air, and around 120 °C in the midday Sun. At night it drops to −173 °C. You'd weigh a sixth of what you do at home.
3 km down
Apollo crews left seismometers behind, and they picked up moonquakes until 1977.
When Apollo 12's empty lander was crashed into the surface on purpose, the whole Moon kept shaking for nearly an hour, ringing like a bell. Its battered, cracked-up rock passes vibrations around without damping them.
A real body: About 126 times Earth's air pressure, in cold, shattered rock.
40 km down
When the Moon was young, its whole surface was an ocean of molten rock.
Light minerals floated to the top and cooled into this crust, about 40 km thick. The pale highlands you can see from Earth are made of it. The dark patches are later lava that flooded the biggest craters.
A real body: About 1,700 times Earth's air pressure, in rock around 350 °C.
900 km down
Deep down here, the Moon has another kind of quake, and they keep to a timetable.
They come in step with the Moon's orbit, when Earth's gravity tugs hardest on the Moon's insides. Earth makes the Moon's tides in rock, just as the Moon makes ours in the sea.
A real body: About 36,000 times Earth's air pressure, in hot rock over 1,000 °C.
1,257 km down
Near the bottom of the mantle the rock is partly melted, softened into a layer about 150 km thick.
Scientists only found it in 2011, by going back over the old Apollo quake recordings with modern methods.
A real body: About 43,000 times Earth's air pressure, in rock so hot it's starting to melt.
1,407 km down
The Moon's core is tiny: only about a fifth of its width, a much smaller share than Earth's.
Its outer part is liquid iron. Billions of years ago it stirred up a magnetic field, possibly as strong as Earth's is today. It has long since gone quiet.
A real body: About 45,000 times Earth's air pressure and around 1,400 °C, in liquid metal.
1,737 km down
You're at the centre of the Moon, inside a ball of solid iron about 500 km across.
In 2023 scientists finally confirmed it's solid, and as dense as iron, by putting together quake records, laser measurements and the Moon's wobble.
A real body: About 47,000 times Earth's air pressure, and around 1,450 °C. Far above, on the side that faces home, Earth hangs in the same spot in the sky as always.
From Apollo's orbit, through the dust and the rock, to the heart of the Moon. You made it.
Under the grey dust is a crust about 40 km thick, made of light rock that floated to the top when the Moon was molten. Below that is a thick rocky mantle.
Near the bottom, the rock is partly melted. Then comes a small core: liquid iron outside, and a solid iron ball about 500 km across at the centre.
Nobody has drilled deeper than 3 m. All of this comes from Apollo's quake recordings, laser measurements and the Moon's wobble.
Iron. The outer core is liquid, and in 2023 scientists confirmed the inner core is solid and as dense as iron, about 500 km across.
Yes. Models put the core at around 1,400 °C, and the rock just above it is partly molten. The surface, meanwhile, swings from about 120 °C to −173 °C.
Yes, moonquakes. Apollo seismometers recorded them until 1977. Deep ones, 700 to 1,200 km down, happen in step with Earth's pull on the Moon.
About 3 metres, during the Apollo missions. Everything deeper is worked out from seismic waves and gravity measurements.
