The safety of lunar landing sites directly impacts the success of lunar exploration missions. This study develops a data-driven predictive model based on machine learning, focusing on engineering safety to assess the suitability of lunar landing sites and provide insights into key factors and feature representations. Six critical engineering factors were selected as constraints for evaluation: slope, elevation, roughness, hillshade, optical maturity, and rock abundance. The XGBoost model was employed to simulate and predict the characteristics of landing areas and Bayesian optimization was used to fine-tune the model’s key hyperparameters, enhancing its predictive performance. The results demonstrate that this method effectively extracts relevant features from multi-source remote sensing data and quantifies the suitability of landing zones, achieving an accuracy of 96% in identifying landing sites (at a resolution of 0.1° × 0.1°), with AUC values exceeding 95%. Notably, slope was recognized as the most critical factor affecting safety. Compared to assessment processes based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Random Forest (RF) models, XGBoost showed superior performance in handling missing values and evaluating feature importance accuracy. The findings suggest that the BO-XGBoost model shows notable classification performance in evaluating the suitability of lunar landing sites, which may provide valuable support for future landing missions and contribute to optimizing lunar exploration efforts.

The samples from lunar farside have great significance for the study of the Moon, and even the solar system. Chang’e-6 landed successfully on the southern mare of the Apollo basin and returned ~2 kg of samples from lunar farside. To provide a better understanding for the background of the returned samples, we conducted detailed crater size-frequency distribution (CSFD) measurements in the Chang’e-6 landing region, the southern mare of the Apollo basin. The southern mare is divided into the western mare (W region) and the eastern mare (E region), and then subdivided into five subunits (W1, W2, W3, W4, W5) and three units (E1, E2, E3), respectively, according to the elevation, TiO₂, and FeO abundances. Within the W2 and W5 region, more detailed subunits were separated out. The results show that the southern mare surface was active during two epochs, the Imbrian period and the Eratosthenian period. The basalt eruption lasted for ~1.7 Ga, from 3.28 Ga of the eastern mare to 1.54 Ga of the western mare. The W region is younger than the E region, while the three units of the E region have an age of ~3.2 Ga. The ages of the western mare basalts range from 2.98 Ga to 1.54 Ga, lasting for 1.4 Ga. It is worth noting that the age of the basalt at the Chang’e-6 sampling site is ~1.68 Ga, indicating the samples returned may include components with this very young age.

The samples from lunar farside have great significance for the study of the Moon, and even the solar system. Chang’e-6 landed successfully on the southern mare of the Apollo basin and returned ~2 kg samples from lunar farside. To provide a better understanding for the background of the returned samples, we conducted detailed crater size-frequency distribution (CSFD) measurements in the Chang’e-6 landing region, the southern mare of the Apollo basin. The southern mare is divided into western mare (W region) and eastern mare (E region), and then subdivided into five sub-units (W1, W2, W3, W4, W5) and three units (E1, E2, E3), respectively, according to the elevation, Ti and Fe abundances. Within the W2 and W5 region, more detailed sub-units were divided. The results show that the southern mare generally have two epochs, one of the Imbrian period and the other of the Eratothenian period. The basalt eruption lasted for ~1.7 Ga, from 3.28 Ga of the eastern mare to 1.54 Ga of the western mare. W region is younger than E region, while the three units of E region has an age of ~3.2 Ga. The ages of the western mare basalts range from 2.98 Ga to 1.54 Ga, lasting for 1.4 Ga. It’s worth noting that the age of the basalt at the Chang’e-6 sampling site is ~1.68 Ga, indicating the samples returned may include components with this very young age.