the moon is drifting away from the earth (because tides, future post mzbgqocq). assuming this continues indefinitely (a questionable assumption, future post ayhqopzh), eventually the moon will become so weakly gravitationally bound to earth that other planets (probably Jupiter) will perturb it out of earth orbit and into orbit around the sun, making the moon technically a dwarf planet. what happens next? (no one knows, because chaos theory.)
if the moon hangs around for a while in a roughly parallel orbit, earth will lose its designation as a planet, having failed to clear its orbit of other bodies.
losing the moon will be highly problematic for space stations built at earth-moon Lagrange points.
which other moons are destined to become (dwarf) planets? which will be ground into ring systems?
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