The moon appears static and unchanging now The cold, lifeless surface of the moon seems like it never changes - but Nasa has created a video charting the satellite\'s unseen, violent 4.5 billion-year history.Each distinctive mark on the moon\'s surface was sculpted by shattering asteroid impacts and other unimaginably destructive forces.
The video, created to celebrate the 1,000th day of Nasa\'s Lunar Reconnaisssance Orbiter, offers a humbling perspective on how a molten orb of debris became the grey satellite we see today.
\'From year to year, the moon never seems to change,\' says Nasa. \'Craters and other formations appear to be permanent now, but the moon didn\'t always look like this. Thanks to NASA\'s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we now have a better look at some of the moon\'s history.\'
The moon is thought to have formed when planet around the size of Mars slammed into our Earth 4.5 billion years ago, hurling billions of billions of tonnes of hot matter into space.
Since then, the surface has been blasted by asteroids - ranging from huge rocks that tore the surface open to barrages of tiny impacts that peppered the surface.
Nasa\'s video plays around with time a little - asteroids fly in visibly, then time \'speeds up\' to show thousands of impacts battering the surface over timescales at the limit of human understanding.
Much of the information is gleaned from the LRO\'s observations of the moon from heights as low as 15 miles above the moon.
This year, Nasa\'s twin \'Grail\' probes began a mission to map \'inside\' the moon by measuring its gravity.