The moon is tidally locked, and is so much smaller than the Earth, so wouldn’t the Earth filter out any debris heading for the moon?
In: Planetary Science
1 – It wasn’t always tidally locked, and it’s been gathering craters the whole time it’s been orbiting. Since there’s no atmosphere to erode them, the craters can last a very long time.
2 – The Earth and the Moon are not all *that* close together, compared to their own sizes. Here’s a post showing their size, relative to the distance between them: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/122ol8t/realistic_size_and_distance_between_earth_and_moon/
So, the Earth is not much of a shield, when push comes to shove.
Think about how often lunar eclipses happen (that’s where the Earth blocks the sun from hitting the moon). Not very often right? That’s basically the percentage of the time that the earth is “protecting” the moon from the sun.
Basically the moon is so far away from earth it’s only protected a tiny portion of the time from a given direction.
Both sides have craters, what our side has more are old lava basins which appear darker from Earth.
The back has even more.
The Moon also doesn’t have an atmosphere to burn up meteors before impact, nor to weather down craters over time to make them less visible
The Moon is also responsible for collecting a lot of meteorite impacts that would have otherwise hit the Earth
Asteroids can also come in at angles that wouldn’t have hit the Earth but do collide with the near side of the moon. They don’t need to pass through the Earth to get to the near side of the Moon. Space is very empty, even when you’re just in the Earth-Moon system, so there’s plenty of space for asteroids to sneak through.
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