The western hemisphere of the Moon, as seen by the Galileo spacecraft (Image: Johnson Space Center Collection / NASA)

BILLIONS of years ago, the man in the moon may have performed the ultimate about-face, when an asteroid flipped the moon around.

The far side of the moon never faces us, because the moon rotates once for every orbit it makes of the Earth. Yet an analysis of impact craters shows the far side may once have pointed our way.

Mark Wieczorek and Matthieu Le Feuvre at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics in France studied the relative age and distribution …