The very first samples from the far side of the moon have ended up on Earth. China’s Chang’e 6 capsule landed in Inner Mongolia on Tuesday, carrying rocks that could confirm or debunk scientists’ current theories about the moon’s origins.
The samples could help scientists confirm the current hypothesis about the moon’s origin: that the molten Earth collided with a body the size of Mars, shearing off material orbiting Earth next to us and destroying the moon created.
“Think about the geology of the Earth: if you only landed in North America, you’d miss a big part of the story, right?” Richard Carlson, director emeritus of Carnegie Science’s Earth and Planets Laboratory, explained NPR.
Researchers believe that if the rock samples from China show the same age as what NASA’s Apollo program yielded last century, it would confirm the hypothesis. If not, that would throw a spanner in the works and force us to rethink our understanding of the moon’s birth.
“It’s pretty clear that the far side and the near side have a lot of differences,” said Jim Head, a planetary scientist at Brown University. NPR. “It is a very critical issue. You cannot understand the origin of a planet with one hemisphere.”
Chang’e 6 landed on the far side of the moon early this month, only the second successful mission to the end of Earth’s neighbor, which has always been turned away from it. The pair rotate in sync, keeping one side constantly hidden from view. This makes landings difficult because Earth has no direct line of communication with the other side, forcing China’s space program to rely on a satellite relay.
China has offered to share some of the samples with American scientists as a sign of cooperation during otherwise tense times between the two countries. NASA has given the green light to US researchers to submit proposals to study the historic samples.
