Results are coming out from the samples returned by China’s Chang’e-6 sample return mission to the far side of the Moon. They offer our first close-up look at the geology and history of the far side, and a recent paper published in Science Advances from researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has very interesting insights about the impact history of the Moon itself, and even some for the solar system at large.

For the first time in history, scientists have analyzed actual samples from the lunar farside—thanks to China’s Chang’e-6 mission—and discovered that the surface there weathers differently than...