High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Tidal locking (or captured rotation) occurs when the gravitational gradient makes one side of an astronomical body always face another, an effect known as synchronous rotation. For example, the same side of the Earth`s Moon always faces the Earth. A tidally locked body takes just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around its partner. This causes one hemisphere constantly to face the partner body. Usually, at any given time only the satellite is tidally locked around the larger body, but if the difference in mass between the two bodies and their physical separation is small, each may be tidally locked to the other, as is the case between Pluto and Charon. This effect is employed to stabilize some artificial satellites.