Chinese scientists have used AI to determine the chemical make-up of the moon’s far side, offering new insights into one of lunar science’s enduring mysteries.
Nearly half the moon’s surface – the far side which permanently faces away from the Earth – had long remained chemically unmapped.
But samples from China’s Chang’e-6 mission, combined with advanced technologies, have enabled a team led by the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics (SITP) to crack the lunar chemical code.
Researchers from SITP, an affiliate of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, teamed up with peers from Tongji University in Shanghai and several other Chinese institutes for the study.
It enabled the creation of the first high-precision global distribution map of major oxides on the moon, according to findings published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Sensors.
“The study revealed the exposure characteristics of deep materials in the South Pole-Aitken basin and the compositional patterns of far-side lunar terrains,” SITP said in a statement this week.
