Our moon is a heavily cratered no man’s land, after American astronauts successfully reached the moon in 1969 we began retrieving samples of moon rock. Scientists discovered from the moon rock that the Moon was somewhere between 4.6 billion and 3 billion years old. We have discovered that moon rock is similar to one of the most basic minerals on Earth, bath salt, and from this knowledge we’ve begun to understand several theories about the Moon. One of these theories being that the moon could very likely have come from the Earth, while previous theories had suggested the Moon was an asteroid that fell in to orbit by Earth’s gravitational pull.
	Although it is not yet proven, scientists tend to believe that the Moon was, in fact, once a part of Earth. Some of the data that supports this theory is what we have learned from looking at the moons of Mars. Mars has two moons, the closest to Mars called Phobos and the smaller of the two called Diemos. Both of these moons are similar but also very different from our Moon, like our Moon, Phobos and Diemos are heavily cratered rock bodies that fell in to the gravitational pull of a planet. Phobos and Diemos have been discovered to be composed of a carbon enriched rock unlike the Moon; which is composed of Earth-like material.
	The fact that Phobos and Diemos are composed of this carbon-rich rock has led scientist to believe that they are both asteroids who were captured by Mars’s gravitational pull, a similar theory once believed of our moon. Scientists believe this because this carbon-rich composition is similar in C-type asteroids and ice. Phobos and Diemos are very small and, unlike our Moon, not spherical, this is because of their size. Scientists understand that Phobos and Diemos are much closer to Mars than our Moon is to Earth, as well as Mars’s moons being small and composed of similar material in C-type asteroids. All of this data leads many to believe that Mars’s moons are captured asteroids. Because our Moon, alternatively, is large enough to be rounded, composed of similar material to Earth, and distanced from Earth we accept a different theory about the creation of our moon, that being it was once a part of our Earth.