Rock samples show moon's farside interior is cooler than the nearside

The moon is sometimes called "two-faced" because the surface of its side perpetually facing away from Earth looks so different than its side always facing our planet. And the differences run deeper than that, as shown by an analysis of rock and soil retrieved in 2024 by China's Chang'e-6 robotic lunar spacecraft. Scientists said the chemical makeup of the minerals in the material obtained from a location on the moon's farside showed it formed from lava within the lunar mantle about 60 miles (100 km) under the surface some 2.8 billion years ago, crystallizing at a temperature of about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius). They compared that to data on previously studied samples of rock that crystallised in the...