You don’t need a telescope to see that the moon is riddled with craters. For billions of years, our celestial neighbor has been absolutely bombarded by asteroids and comets, and the assault has left behind a heavily pockmarked lunar surface.
The largest and oldest-known impact site on the moon is the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, stretching across nearly 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) of the far side of the moon. And thanks to new research, scientists have dated the SPA basin to the period between 4.32 and 4.33 billion years ago.
A research team led by scientists at the University of Manchester determined the age of the basin by analyzing a lunar meteorite known as Northwest Africa 2995. The meteorite, which was found in Algeria in 2005, contained uranium and lead that was dated to this period.
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