The Earth is cradled in an atmosphere that burns up small impactors before they reach the surface, and a magnetosphere that largely shields the surface from solar and cosmic particle radiation. The Moon and other airless planetary bodies lack such protection, and their surfaces, laid bare to the space environment, continually interact with, and are altered by this environment.
Large impacts have shaped the terrain of the Moon, leaving a cratered surface covered with fragmental debris or regolith. At the smaller scale, each grain of regolith is likely to show damage tracks from high-energy cosmic rays, have a surface transformed...
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