Volcanoes on the Moon's Hidden Side

Did you know that the far side of the moon, the part we never see from Earth, had its own share of volcanic activity? This was proven by a recent study that analyzed rocks and dirt brought back by China's Chang'e-6 spacecraft. Scientists found fragments of volcanic rock that were over 2 billion years old. One piece was a whopping 4. 2 billion years old! This discovery is really exciting because it fills in a missing puzzle piece for scientists. They already knew about volcanoes on the near side of the moon. But the far side was always a mystery. These first samples from that side confirm that it was also once active with volcanoes. So, why is the far side so different from the near side? It has more craters and fewer flat, dark plains. This is likely because it didn't have as many lava flows. But why is that? That's still a mystery scientists are trying to solve. China's spacecraft is not the first to bring back moon rocks. NASA’s Apollo astronauts and Soviet spacecraft did the same in the 1970s. But Chang'e-6 is special because it's the first to bring samples from the far side. These findings show that volcanoes were erupting on the lunar far side for over 1 billion years. That's a long time! Future studies will help us understand how this activity lasted so long.