Abstract The South Pole‐Aitken (SPA) Basin, the Moon’s largest impact structure, holds key insights into lunar evolution, prompting the Chang’e‐6 mission to return first samples for ground‐truth verification. Analysis of over 6,000 grains from the Chang’e‐6 soil returned from the SPA Basin reveals a composition dominated by clinopyroxene (26.5–32.9 vol.%), plagioclase (29.9–33.2 vol.%) and glass (32.4–36.2 vol.%), with low orthopyroxene and olivine contents. This indicates the Chang’e‐6 landing site contains minimal deep mantle components, and the primary ejecta material is plagioclase‐rich. However, laboratory reflectance spectroscopy on the same sample suggests much higher abundances of ultramafic minerals, aligning with previous orbital data. This discrepancy implies that reflectance spectroscopy likely overestimates ultramafic phases, a result attributed to unique farside space weathering including higher solar wind flux in the absence of geomagnetic shielding, and methodological limitations. The findings highlight the necessity of recalibrating spectral models for accurate mineral quantification on the lunar farside.

Read original article