Why does the Moon have craters facing the Earth? ?
The craters are caused by meteor impacts . The earth doesn’t really protect the moon from meteor impacts. Only a VERY tiny portion of the potential meteor strikes would be shadowed by the earth. It would be an unimaginably small chance that a potential moon impact trajectory would also pass through the disk of the earth. Besides, the current tidal locking has only existed for a small portion of the moon’s 4-5 billion year life. For most of that period, it rotated in respect to the earth, meaning any part of it could be facing ‘out’.
