We now see this face, the “rabbit”. And the others?
In: Planetary Science
It has almost certainly not changed the face in many millions of years. The volcano activity was even affected by this giving the side we see more ‘seas’ than the far side. It is also very slowly moving farther away, but not a noticable amount in the millions of years that humans have been humans. Back in the time of the dinosaurs, it was about 2% closer.
The Moon’s rotation time and orbit time are the same. As a result the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth. The face changes when things hit it, but it’s been pretty stable for millions of years.
One theory is that might explain this is that the Moon has slightly non-uniform density. In this configuration the “heavy side” faces the Earth. Maybe once, many millions of years ago, there was some rotation, but the mass imbalance scrubs off that rotational velocity until the face is locked.
The Moon is tidally locked, meaning it rotates as the same speed it orbits. That is why the same side of the moon is always facing us.
[This is what the other side looks like](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Far_side_of_the_Moon.png/1280px-Far_side_of_the_Moon.png)
It doesn’t have any of the gray seas that we are familiar with because they were formed by cooling lava when the Moon was formed. The crust on the far side of the Moon was much thicker, so the lava couldn’t reach the surface to make those seas.
We believe this is the case because when the Moon was formed, there were actually two moons that collided to form the one we are familiar with. The smaller moon became the thick crust on the far side of the Moon.
The thicker crust on the far side also suggests that the Moon has been tidally locked since very early in its lifetime. The Moon has, however, been slowly drifting away, so over the last few hundred million years, it would have appeared larger. No human could ever have witnessed this larger Moon, though.
I was about to type an answer but figured it was better to just leave this as a response because it answers better than I would.
https://science.nasa.gov/moon/tidal-locking/
It’s called tidal locking and it’s a super common thing to happen to large moons shortly after formation
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