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First returned rock samples shine a light on the Moon’s ‘dark side’

Soil samples from the far side of the Moon provide clues about the origin of lunar asymmetry and the effects of ‘mega-basin’ impacts on the evolution of rocky planets
By
  1. Stephen M. Elardo

    1. Stephen M. Elardo is in the Florida Planets Lab, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611, USA.

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Although it is frequently referred to as the ‘dark side’, the part of the Moon that faces away from Earth receives just as much sunlight as does the side we can see at night. However, the far side of the Moon has long been dark in a different sense. Only 24 humans have seen it in person, and before June 2024, no samples had been collected from known far-side locations. Last year, however, the Chang’e-6 mission, developed by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), made history by returning the first samples from the far side of the Moon. Writing in Nature, Zhou et al.1 use samples of 2.8-billion-year-old lava from the South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin on the Moon’s far side to cast light on differences in the origin and evolution of the Moon’s near and far sides. Their work is published alongside other studies on Chang’e-6 samples from Zhang et al.2, Cai et al.3 and He et al.4.

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Nature 643, 337-338 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02050-7

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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