We know very well the side of the Moon that faces the Earth. We are constantly observing, scanning with telescopes, we know almost all landforms, craters and valleys. However, there is also the far side of the Moon, which we have never seen and will never see from Earth. We were able to image it for the first time with the Soviet Union’s Luna 3 probe in 1959 and saw how different the Moon is from the side facing us.

The far side of the Moon is very rugged, filled with thousands of craters, and lacks the dark gray patterns we’re used to seeing on the Moon. Scientists have since tried to understand why these two sides of the Moon are so different.

An article published in Science Advances tells us that the difference is due to dark shadows, a large celestial body that struck the Moon billions of years ago, and lava. The lines we see on the Earth-facing side of the Moon, left behind by ancient lava from surface volcanic activity, are not found on the far side, which is quite surprising.

Scientists tried to determine what might have happened to the Moon with computer simulations. From this it turned out that a celestial body that struck the Moon billions of years ago changed the Moon’s lower region and created a huge impact crater that we now call the SPA basin.

Planetary scientist at Brown University and lead author of the study, Matt Jones, says, “We know that large impacts like the one that created the SPA would create a lot of heat.” ”

What they found is that this massive impact created a heat cloud that carried a group of specific chemical elements to the near side of the Moon, not the far side. “We think this effect is causing mantle melting, which causes the lava flows we see at the surface,” says Jones.

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