A violent impact that carved out the moon's largest impact basin may have scattered deep lunar material near the lunar south pole — right where NASA plans to send Artemis astronauts. A new study suggests the South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin, an impact crater more than 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide on the moon 's far side, was likely created by a differentiated asteroid . The findings might answer some of science's biggest questions about the SPA's creation — and they could have major implications for future lunar exploration. Using high-resolution 3D simulations, a team of researchers led by Shigeru Wakita of Purdue University found that SPA's distinctive tapered-ellipse shape is best explained by a 160-mile-wide (260-kilometer-wide) differentiated impactor — a large asteroid that had already separated into a dense iron core and a rocky outer layer, much like a tiny planet.…