Moon's Far Side Rocks Revise Lunar History

Ancient samples from the Moon's far side are helping scientists uncover how asteroid impacts shaped the early Solar System. The findings challenge decades of thinking about when those impacts occurred and offer new insights into the conditions that influenced Earth's evolution.

Researchers studying lunar rocks have uncovered new evidence about the timing and intensity of asteroid bombardment across the Moon's surface, finding it declined gradually, rather than being a short, intense burst of impacts as previously thought.

Unlike Earth, where ancient geological evidence has been largely erased by erosion, volcanic activity and shifting tectonic plates, the Moon has preserved a record of impacts stretching back billions of years.

Research co-author Dr Fred Jourdan, from Curtin University's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said lunar rocks acted as a natural archive of the Solar System's history, allowing scientists to investigate events that occurred shortly after the planets formed.