Evidence of a 4.33 billion year age for the Moon’s South Pole–Aitken basin

The Moon’s farside South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin is the largest and oldest visible impact basin in the inner Solar System. Determining the timing of this catastrophic event is key to understanding the onset of the lunar basin-forming epoch, with implications for understanding the impact bombardment history of the inner Solar System. Despite this, the formation age of the SPA basin remains poorly constrained. Here we show that the chemical composition of the lunar meteorite Northwest Africa 2995 is in good agreement with lithologies exposed within the southern region of the SPA basin. Radiometric dating of a range of mineral and rock components in Northwest Africa 2995 yielded consistent dates of ~4.32–4.33 billion years old. We interpret these dates as the age of SPA basin formation, inferring that this event occurred ~120 million years before the formation of the main cluster of lunar impact basins between ~4.2 Ga and 3.8 Ga. This weakens support for a narrow period of lunar late heavy impact bombardment and also implies that the earliest formed impact basins on the Moon (that is, >4.33–4.5 Ga old) were erased either by the SPA impact itself when its formation caused massive resurfacing of the lunar surface or through other geological processes. A lunar meteorite sample called Northwest Africa 2995 probably originated from the South Pole–Aitken basin on the Moon’s farside. Minerals in the meteorite date basin formation to 4.32–4.33 billion years ago.