New data from the first spacecraft to land softly on the lunar far side is offering up fresh details about the part of the moon that's hidden from view on Earth. The Chinese rover found that the ground beneath it is similar to what’s found on our satellite’s more familiar face.
It’s further evidence that the moon’s entire surface — not just the limited parts that astronauts explored — is deeply covered in the fluffy moon dirt that astronomers call regolith.
In January 2019, China’s Chang’e-4 lander, along with a rover named Yutu-2 (Chinese for Jade Rabbit), touched down on the moon’s far side. It landed inside Von Kármán crater, a large impact site nestled inside the even more enormous South Pole-Aitken Basin crater. Aitken is the widest, deepest and oldest crater on the moon. That status has made it a prime target for scientists who want to study how ...
