Dante Crater

Only a handful of humans have ever seen the farside of the Moon.

There was a time after the Moon's formation when the entire surface was covered by an ocean of magma; the upper layer of this magma ocean crystallized to form a global layer of anorthosite.

Since that time, impacts and other geological processes have broken and churned the surface, but the Dante Crater area may posses significant amounts of these original rocks. Pristine lunar anorthosites are relatively rare in the Apollo sample collections. The ancient regolith contains rocks that formed from impact melt.

The Dante region has abundant aluminum and calcium-rich regolith.

Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University