… In 2024, Chang’e-6 made history by bringing 1,935.3 grams of lunar far-side samples back to Earth. These samples were collected from the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the largest, deepest and oldest basin on the moon, which provided a rare opportunity to clarify the compositional differences between the near and far sides and to unravel the long-standing mystery of their asymmetry. …
… They revealed volcanic activity on the lunar far side around 4.2 billion and 2.8 billion years ago, lasting at least 1.4 billion years. They also obtained the first paleomagnetic data from the far side, discovering that the lunar magnetic field may have rebounded around 2.8 billion years ago, suggesting that the lunar dynamo did not decline steadily but experienced fluctuations.
The researchers also measured the water content of the far side lunar mantle for the first time, finding it significantly lower than the nearside mantle, suggesting a dichotomy in the moon’s internal water distribution. They also discovered that far-side basalts originate from an extremely depleted source, possibly indicating a highly depleted primitive lunar mantle or melt extraction caused by large impact events, revealing that such events may have profoundly influenced the evolution of the moon’s deep layers. …