It was as though Earth’s silent companion whispered a secret — one long buried in shadows where light and curiosity seldom reach. For billions of years, the Mooe hemisphere that neus — was a silent time, its story h patterns of cratepers from orbiting probes. Then, with the steady hum of human ingenuity and robotic precision, that quiet face offered up a handful of material — a handful of stories waiting to be told. These fragments, carried across silent space and touching Earth at last, have drawn back the curtain on a new chapter of lunar history, a chapter that beckons us to rethink time itself on our nearest celestial neighbor.
Scientists have achieved what many lunar researchers long hoped for: a refined understanding of how to read the Moon’s geological clock. For decades, the age of the lunar surface in distant regions had been approximated by counting impact craters, a method that relies on surface scars as proxies for age. However, this approach leaned heavily on samples gathered only from the Moon’s near side — those familiar plains pocked by Apollo and Luna missions. Without physical material from the far side, scientists were left tracing shadows of time across a hemisphere they could not touch.
In June 2024, China’s Chang’e-6 mission opened a new chapter by returning 1,935 grams of lunar rock and soil from the ancient South Pole–Aitken Basin, the deepest, oldest impact scar on the Moon’s far side. These samples, unusually pristine and varied in age, provided scientists with solid benchmarks: basalt about 2.807 billion years old and ancient norite dating to roughly 4.25 billion years ago — the latter likely crystallized soon after the colossal impact that forged the basin itself.
By combining crater counts from high-resolution satellite imagery with these new sample dates, researchers found a striking continuity between the far and near sides. What once was thought potentially different in impact histories now aligns: the impact rate appears uniform across the Moon’s surface, gently declining over time rather than shifting in dramatic bursts. This homogeneity means that scientists can anchor a globally unified lunar chronology model — a universal timeline for dating terrains across the entire Moon.
The implications stretch beyond the Moon alone. A more accurate timeline lets scientists better estimate ages of surfaces on other rocky bodies in the solar system by analogy, sharpening our understanding of the broader narrative of planetary formation and evolution. Moreover, the Chang’e-6 findings enrich a mosaic of discoveries from these far-side samples that also hint at ancient volcanic activity and unique mineral compositions, further illuminating the Moon’s deep past.
In this careful unfolding of lunar time, each fragment — once silent — now contributes to a chorus of cosmic memory, helping humanity to read the Moon’s layers of history with clearer eyes and firmer footing.
Though the Moon may no longer hold all its secrets, its far side has begun to tell a story that will echo in scientific inquiry for years to come.
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Sources Xinhua / Science and Technology Daily Anadolu Agency China Daily China.org.cn ScienceDaily