Investigates meteoroid flux across the lunar surface, revealing similar weathering outcomes at both sides over time.
The spatial heterogeneity of meteoroid impact flux has shaped the space weathering environment across the lunar surface, driving key evolutionary processes such as crater degradation, regolith gardening, and soil grain exposure. This study investigates the spatial weathering environment of the Chang’E-6 (CE-6) landing site using a comprehensive approach combining remote sensing analysis, gardening simulations, and soil measurements. Our results reveal that meteoroid fluxes at sub-meter scales exhibit remarkable similarity between the lunar nearside and farside over million-year timescales, resulting in analogous regolith gardening and crater degradation patterns. Lunar soil samples primarily originate from an impact ~17.5 Myr ago. Soil gardening simulations estimate a grain exposure duration of ~1.54 Myr, consistent with the measured exposure age of 1.76 ± 0.88 Myr. These findings demonstrate that the exposure history of CE-6 lunar soil grains is principally governed by the most recent major impact event. Remote sensing, sample analysis, and gardening simulations uncover little variation in sub-meter meteoroid fluxes at the lunar nearside and farside and reveal that the exposure history of lunar soil is governed by the most recent impact event
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Liu et al. (2026) studied this question.
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