In a cosmic plot twist, China’s Chang’e-6 lunar mission has cracked the code to the Moon’s ancient past! Scientists just confirmed that impact cratering rates on the Moon’s near and far sides are nearly identical—a discovery that’s rewriting textbooks 📚✨. This breakthrough, published in Science Advances on February 5, 2026, ends a decades-long debate about whether the Moon’s two hemispheres aged differently.
Using 1,935 grams of lunar samples collected from the far side’s Apollo Basin in 2024, researchers identified 2.8-billion-year-old basalt and 4.25-billion-year-old norite—the oldest lunar rocks ever analyzed. These samples acted like a time machine 🕰️, helping scientists map crater densities across the Moon’s mysterious far side for the first time.
"This is like finding the missing puzzle piece for the Moon’s timeline," said lead researcher Yue Zongyu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The new data confirms that early lunar impacts declined gradually, not in violent bursts as once thought. This unified chronology could now help date planetary surfaces across our solar system 🌌.
Fun fact: The findings also validate China’s ambitious lunar program, which has become a global leader in space exploration since its first Moon landing in 2013. Who knew rocks could tell such an epic story? 🚀
