Chang'e-6 Dust Reveals the Moon’s Hidden Interior After a Giant Collision

A new analysis of dust from the Moon’s far side collected by China’s Chang’e-6 mission finds heavier potassium isotopes than near-side samples, suggesting the South Pole–Aitken impact heated the Moon so intensely that lighter isotopes vaporized and escaped, reshaping the Moon’s mantle and leaving long-lasting hemispheric chemical differences and possibly triggering deep interior processes.