[attach id=658755 size="medium" align="right"]Buzz Aldrin climbing down the Eagle’s ladder to the surface of the moon. Photo: NASA[/attach]
Clips of astronauts bouncing on the lunar surface have created a widespread misconception regarding gravity on the moon.
Many understand this to mean that there is no gravity on the lunar surface, and that astronauts are free to bounce around limitlessly on the moon.
Anything with mass, however, has a gravitational pull associated with it.
The moon is no different – the gravitational pull on the surface of the moon is around 0.16G, or around one-sixth that experienced on the Earth’s surface.
This means that although the moon has a much lesser gravitational pull than the Earth, and thus one could bounce around much more freely than on Earth, the gravitational pull on the moon would eventually pull you back to the ground.