Volcanoes erupted on the mysterious far side of the Moon billions of years ago, just like on the side we can see, new research confirms.
Researchers analyzed lunar soil reported by The Chinese Chang’e-6the first spacecraft to return with a transport of rocks and dirt from the little-explored dark side.
Two separate teams discovered fragments of volcanic rock approximately 2.8 billion years old. One piece was even older, dating back 4.2 billion years.
“Getting a sample of this area is really important because it’s an area that we don’t have data for otherwise,” said Christopher Hamilton, an expert on planetary volcanoes at the University of Arizona who not participated in the research.
Scientists know that there were active volcanoes on the near side, the part of the Moon seen from Earth, dating back to a similar period. Previous studies, including data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, suggested that the far side could also have a volcanic past. The first samples from this region opposite the Earth confirm an active history.
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The results were published Friday in the journal Science.
China has launched several spacecraft to the Moon. In 2020, the Chang’e-5 spacecraft returned lunar rocks from the near side, the first since those collected by NASA’s Apollo astronauts and Soviet Union spacecraft in the 1970s. Chang’e-4 became the first to visit the far side of the Moon in 2019.
The far side of the Moon is pockmarked with craters and has fewer flat, dark plains sculpted by lava flows. Why the two halves are so different remains a mystery, said Qiu-Li Li, co-author of the study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Li said the new findings reveal more than a billion years of volcanic eruptions on the far side of the Moon. Future research will determine how this activity lasted so long.
China lunar program It’s part of a growing rivalry with the United States – still a leader in space exploration – and other countries, including Japan and India. China launched a three-member crew on its own space station orbiting Earth, and its goal is to send astronauts to the Moon by 2030. More Chinese lunar probe missions are planned over the next four years.
NASA plans its first Artemis mission flown late next yearlaunching three NASA astronauts and a Canadian aviator on a loop trip around the moon and back to test the agency’s Orion crew transport ship.
William Harwood contributed to this report.
