Surface Gravity of the Moon
| Value | 1.62 m/s² |
| Status | Measured: ± 0.01 m/s² (0.0062 relative) |
| Source | NASA planetary fact sheet (equatorial surface gravity) |
| Categories | Astronomical |
| microgal | 162,000,000 μGal |
| milligal | 162,000 mGal |
| millimeter per second squared | 1,620 mm/s² |
| centimeter per second squared | 162 cm/s² |
| gal | 162 Gal |
| inch per second squared | 63.779528 in/s² |
| kilometer per hour per second | 5.832 km/h/s |
| foot per second squared | 5.3149606 ft/s² |
| mile per hour per second | 3.6238368 mph/s |
| meter per second squared | 1.62 m/s² |
| standard gravity | 0.16519403 g |
Learning zone
One sixth of a g changes how bodies move, not how much they mass. Apollo astronauts found that walking was inefficient and adopted a loping bunny-hop, and the same acceleration is why a hammer and a falcon feather dropped by Dave Scott on Apollo 15 hit the dust together — Galileo's experiment finally run without air. Ascent from the lunar surface needs only about 1.9 km/s of delta-v, against roughly 9.4 km/s from Earth, which is the whole reason lunar-orbit rendezvous won the Apollo mission-mode argument.
Local gravity is not uniform. Dense mascons buried under the maria pull hard enough to perturb low lunar orbits noticeably, an effect that surprised the Lunar Orbiter program in 1966 and that GRAIL later mapped in detail; most low circular orbits around the Moon are unstable over months as a result.