Why are some areas of the moon so much more pelleted by meteor strikes than other areas?
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Most of the impact craters on the moon are very old, creating from impacts roughly 4 billion years ago. At that point, the moon was only a few hundred million years old and still very volcanically active. In some areas of the moon, particularly the near side (the side that always faces the Earth), the lunar crust is much thinner than in other areas. This allowed large volcanic eruptions to fill large agent basins and impact craters, essentially erasing them. So the moon actually received roughly the same number of impacts on the near side and far side, it’s just that on the near side, large lava plains filled in and erased all of the oldest and most numerous impact craters.
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