Escape Velocity of the Moon
| Value | 2380 m/s |
| Status | Conventional / typical value |
| Source | Derived from the GRAIL lunar GM and the mean radius |
| Categories | Astronomicalsolar-systemmoon |
| meter per second | 2,380 m/s |
| kilometer per hour | 8,568 km/h |
| foot per second | 7,808.399 ft/s |
| mile per hour | 5,323.9084 mph |
| knot | 4,626.3499 kn |
| foot per minute | 468,503.94 ft/min |
| centimeter per second | 238,000 cm/s |
| meter per hour | 8,568,000 m/h |
| meter per day | 205,632,000 m/d |
| foot per day | 674,645,670 ft/d |
Learning zone
At 2.38 km/s the Moon cannot hold an atmosphere. Gas molecules at lunar daytime temperatures reach a substantial fraction of that speed, so anything released — from outgassing, from comet impacts, from the Apollo landers themselves — escapes within weeks. What remains is an exosphere so thin, around 10⁵ particles per cubic centimetre, that atoms essentially never collide with one another.
The low escape speed is also what made Apollo feasible. The ascent stage carried a single small engine and no heat shield, since there was no atmosphere to slow it and none to fly through; and it is why lunar resources are so often discussed for propellant depots, where launching water or oxygen out of the Moon's shallow gravity well costs a small fraction of lifting it from Earth.