Looking at the Moon

Some. It doesn't have a lot of gravity, but it does probably help for meteorites which come in near the lunar orbital plane.

Of course when it is a half moon they will get right through.

Earth itself is formed by a series of collisions in the early formative days of the solar system, some 4 billions years ago, and to a lesser and lesser degree, much later on.

According to current thought, the mere creation of the moon and it's peculiar orbit, is a result of a gigantic collision with earth, and clearly by looking at the moon's surface, it is evident that it took a lot of meteor and asteroid impact.

However, the moon's lack of atmosphere, left ancient and new impact craters alike, in near-perfect preservation, so it's hard to determine a crater's age by it's appearance alone.

The existence of atmosphere on earth, is responsible for a serious abrasive effect of such craters, via wind, rain, geological activity, and the ambient impact of the biosphere.

As mentioned in the post above, it may have shielded some of the impacts, but it's hard to determine how much, where, and especially when.

Well considering the gravity (mass) ratio of earth and moon the chance of an big enough to be dangerous object targeting earth, being captured by moon gravity is really slim but not zero.

Proof of that is the moon surface. Even one object of those that created its craters wouldn't be nice to land on your head'

You're not a Viking by the way.?

the potential of the moon's gravity to alter the course of incoming objects away from striking earth is probably very close to the potential to alter the course of objects towards the earth..

there is some shielding effect as the moon may come into the trajectory. this is a relatively small effect, which is greater for slower (relative to the earth) moving objects than for those moving at speeds much greater than the speed the moon orbits the earth.

another reason the earth shows so much less damage is that in addition to creating weather to remove signs of ancient impacts, the atmosphere also serves as a protective barrier, incinerating many incoming objects before these objects can strike the surface

benbenben

This is an insightful question. I would submit that the greater factor is the presence of Jupiter that has reduced the numbers of meteors available to impact earth.

I believe that Jupiter's gravitational field has collected the damn things into what we call "the asteroid belt."

I don't think its a coincidence that they are collected there, rather than out beyond saturn or in around our orbit. We can even think of the solar system as a process , and Jupiters Gravity has a role in collecting such debris...

Yes the Moon does provide a closer but similar means.

milo

The moon orbiting around the earth will sweep objects within it's path. This provides a clearer path for earth in it's orbit than it would otherwise have.

How strong this effect is, I couldn't say, but with the enormous size of the moon relative to earth (compared to moons around other planets), it is probably reasonably significant.

Think about this. Why does the dark side of the moon have less strikes than the bright side of the moon during full moon of course.