{"id":147741,"date":"2025-11-19T06:07:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T06:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/147741\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T06:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T06:07:10","slug":"chinas-change-4-lander-discovers-structures-beneath-the-dark-side-of-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/147741\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s Chang’e-4 lander discovers structures beneath the dark side of the moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have uncovered billions of years\u2019 worth of secrets buried beneath the surface of the moon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our celestial companion has been a source of awe and mystery since time immemorial, but now, thanks to China\u2019s space programme, we\u2019re starting to piece together its past.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the Chang\u2019e-4 lander, of the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA), became the first spacecraft ever to land on the far side (or the dark side, if you’d prefer) of the moon.<\/p>\n

Since then, it has been capturing incredible images of impact craters and extracting mineral samples, offering a long-sought insight into the structures that make up the top 1,000 feet of the moon\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

Back in 2023, the Chang\u2019e-4\u2019s findings were finally published, and the world was invited to delve deep into the history of our cherished natural satellite.<\/p>\n

The results, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets<\/a>, reveal that the top 130 feet (40m) of the lunar surface are made up of multiple layers of dust, soil, and broken rocks.<\/p>\n

Hidden within these layers is a crater, which formed when a large object slammed into the moon, according to Jianqing Feng, an astrogeological researcher at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, who co-led the pioneering analysis.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/ Chang’e 4 Lander and Rover on the moon CNSA<\/p>\n

Beneath this, Feng and his colleagues discovered five distinct layers of lunar lava that spread across the landscape billions of years ago.<\/p>\n

Experts believe that our moon formed 4.51 billion years ago, when a Mars-size object crashed into Earth and broke off a chunk of our planet, as Live Science<\/a> notes.<\/p>\n

Over the following 200 million years or so, the moon continued to be pummelled by space debris, with numerous impacts leaving cracks in its surface. <\/p>\n

Just like on Earth, the moon\u2019s mantle contained pockets of molten magma, which infiltrated the newly formed cracks thanks to a series of volcanic eruptions, Feng explained.<\/p>\n

However, the new data provided by Chang\u2019e-4 showed that the closer the volcanic rock was to the moon\u2019s surface, the thinner it got.<\/p>\n

“[The moon] was slowly cooling down and running out of steam in its later volcanic stage,” Feng said. “Its energy became weak over time.”<\/p>\n

\"\"\/ The Daedalus crater on the far side of the moon as seen from the Apollo 11 spacecraft NASA<\/p>\n

It is understood that volcanic activity on the moon died out between a billion and 100 million years ago, which means it is largely considered \u201cgeologically dead\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, Feng and his co-authors have suggested there could still be magma buried deep beneath the lunar surface.<\/p>\n

Chang\u2019e-4 still has much work to do, and Feng and his team hope this is just the beginning of their literally ground-breaking mapping of the moon.<\/p>\n

This article was first published on May 2, 2023<\/p>\n

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Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have uncovered billions of years\u2019 worth of secrets buried beneath the surface of the moon. Our celestial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[84078,12981,61,60,6185,82,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-147741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-change-4","9":"tag-cnsa","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-moon","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}