Billions of years ago, new research has confirmed.
Chang’e-6 spacecraft, the first to return with a haul of rocks and dirt from the unfamiliar far side.
Blokes from different groups discovered bits of volcanic rock, date-stamped at about 2.8 billion years old. One of them was an oldie but a goodie, clocking in at 4.2 billion years.
‘Getting a sample from this region is a really big deal because it’s an area where we currently have no data,’ said Christopher Hamilton, a planetary volcano expert at the University of Arizona.
Scientists reckon there were active volcanoes on the near side of the moon, the bit that can be seen from Earth, going back to roughly the same era.
Past research, including information from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, indicated the far side of the moon might have also experienced volcanic activity.
The first samples taken from the region not facing Earth confirm an active history. The findings were presented in the journals Nature and Science on Friday.
China has blasted off several space probes to the moon.
In 2020, the Chang’e-5 spacecraft brought back moon rocks from the near side of the moon, the first since those collected by NASA’s Apollo astronauts and the Soviet Union’s spacecraft in the 1970s.
The Chang’e-4 spacecraft became the first one to visit the far side of the moon back in 2019.
The moon’s far side is dotted with craters and has fewer of the near side’s flat, dark plains that have been shaped by lava flows.
Why the two halves are so different remains a mystery, said study co-author Qiu-Qi Li from the Chinese Academy of Science.
Li said the new research shows more than a billion years of volcanic activity on the lunar far side.
Future research will figure out what kept the activity going for so long.
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