March 10: Moon’s Closest Approach to Earth in 2024
By Graham Jones. Published 6-Mar-2024
The New Moon of March 2024 will produce this year’s shortest Earth-Moon distance.
How far away is the Moon? The answer is always changing.
©NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Sometimes Near, Sometimes Far
The Moon will make its closest approach to Earth this year at 07:04 UTC on March 10, 2024.
The Moon’s orbit is not a perfect circle. Instead, it is a slightly squashed circle, which mathematicians call an ellipse.
This means the distance from the Earth to the Moon is constantly changing—as you can see for yourself by keeping an eye on the “Distance” figure on our Moon page.
Key Numbers
Shortest Earth-Moon distance in 2024
- March 10: 356,895 km (221,764 miles)
Longest Earth-Moon distance in 2024
- October 2: 406,516 km (252,597 miles)
Distances are measured from the center of the Earth to the center of the Moon. All dates are UTC. Sources: timeanddate.com, JPL Ephemeris DE430.
Supermoons and Eclipses
The most extreme Earth-Moon distances always occur at New Moon or Full Moon, when the Earth, Moon, and Sun are aligned. So it is no coincidence that March 10 and October 2 are New Moons.
April’s New Moon will also be relatively close to Earth: 359,807 km (223,574 miles). Closer means bigger, and a solar eclipse taking place on April 8 will be a total eclipse.
By contrast, a solar eclipse on October 2 will be an annular eclipse, where the Moon is too small to cover the Sun completely.