New York – Billions of years ago, on the mysterious hidden side of the Moon There were volcanoes erupting, just like on the side we can see, new research confirms.
Researchers analyzed lunar soil samples taken by China’s Chang’e 6 probe, the first to return with a cargo of rocks and soil from the little-explored far side.
Two independent teams found fragments of volcanic rock that were approximately 2.8 billion years old. One piece was even older, dating to 4.2 billion years ago.
“Getting a sample from this area is really important because it’s an area that we otherwise don’t have data for,” said Christopher Hamiltonan expert on planetary volcanoes at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the research.
Scientists know that there were active volcanoes on the other side of the satellite, the one seen from Earth, at a similar time. Previous studies, including data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, suggested that the distant one could also have a volcanic past. The first samples from that region facing away from the planet confirm its history.
The results of the research were published on Friday in the journals Nature and Science.
China has sent several spacecraft to the Moon. In 2020, the Chang’e-5 space probe brought back 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 She was the first to visit the far side in 2019.
The so-called hidden side of the Moon is dotted with craters and has fewer dark, flat plains sculpted by lava flows than the side seen from Earth. Why the two halves are so different remains a mystery, said study co-author Qiu-Li Li of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Li said the new findings reveal more than 1 billion years of volcanic eruptions in that part of the satellite. Future research will determine why this activity lasted so long.