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[slate]

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A supermoon is quite easily the

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closest full moon of the year. As we know, the moon's orbit around the

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Earth is not a perfect circle. And so sometimes it's closer

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to the Earth and sometimes it's further away. And when we get both a full moon and the closest

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approach of the moon to the Earth, we get a supermoon.

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This is going to be a particularly important supermoon because it'll be the closest the moon has been to the Earth since January

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of 1948. And so it should be a spectacular show.

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[slate]

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You don't have to be out in any particular instant in time to see

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this. So any clear night over the weekend and into early next

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week you'll be able to see a full moon that's going to be brighter and larger

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than the average full moon. The supermoon which itself happens on Monday

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will appear to be about 14 percent larger and 30 percent

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brighter than the smallest full moon that we get. So really anytime at night

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if it's clear, you'll get a spectacular show and you'll get to see our beautiful moon

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in the sky.

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[slate] Over the seven

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years of the life of the LRO mission we've learned a lot about the moon. And I think for me

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one of the biggest surprises is how dynamic the moon is.

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That we're able to measure the changes that have occurred on the lunar surface

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as a result of impact craters that have formed. And that constant bombardment of

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the lunar surface actually erodes the surfaces quite faster than we expected

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before. Before LRO we thought that the boot prints that the astronauts left

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on the moon during the Apollo program would be around for millions of years.

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And recent results from LRO show that those boot prints may be erased

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much faster, over several tens of thousands of years. So we're learning the moon

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is a much more changing place, much more dynamic place than we ever imaged

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before. [slate]

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[slate] One of the great things about

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the moon is that we use it, our understanding of the moon as a cornerstone

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for understanding all of the other objects in the solar system. So for instance when we got the

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beautiful images of Pluto, we learned that the surface of Pluto has areas that are

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very smooth, that have little impact craters on them. Or few impact craters on them.

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And so one of the things that we can do is estimate the ages of those surfaces.

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It turns out that Pluto has very young surfaces. And the reason that we know that is because of our

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studies of the moon. So for any object in the solar system, the basis of

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our understanding comes from our knowledge of the moon. And so our continued studying

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of the moon tells us more about not only how the moon has evolved, but also how all of the

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solar system objects have evolved.

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[slate]

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To learn more about the LRO mission, you can go to NASA.gov/LRO.

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Follow us on Twitter @LRO_NASA.

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And of course you can also post pictures of the supermoon using the hashtag

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#NASASupermoon.