The examination of soil brought to Earth from the far side of the moon has discovered that billions of years ago, the moon had erupting volcanoes.
The soil was brought to Earth by China’s Chang’e-6, which was the first spacecraft to return with rocks and dirt from the often unexplored side of the moon.
Researchers have since been examining the samples and shared their findings in the journal Science on Friday. In the report, researchers shared that two separate teams found fragments of volcanic rock dated to be about 2.8 billion years old. One piece was even older, dating back 4.2 billion years.
Scientists had known that the near side of the moon — the side seen from Earth — had active volcanoes dating back to a similar time frame.
Studies that were launched from data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter suggested that the far side of the moon might have had active volcanoes. Now, researchers can confirm the theory thanks to the samples.
China has continued to launch missions to the moon, including its Chang’e-5 spacecraft, which launched in 2020 and brought back rocks from the near side of the moon. This was the first mission to do so since NASA’s Apollo missions and the Soviet Union’s spacecraft did so in the 1970s.
The Chang’e-4 became the spacecraft to visit the moon’s far side when the mission was launched in 2019.
The far side of the moon has several craters and fewer flat dark plains than the near side. Study co-author Qiu-Li Li from the Chinese Academy of Sciences shared that it remains a mystery why the two sides are so different in their makeup.
Li said the new findings show over 1 billion years of volcanic eruptions on the far side of the moon. Future research has been launched to determine exactly how long it lasted.