Why Do We See Only Half Of The Moon?

Just a thought...

We all know the Moon orbits the Earth with the 'near side' facing 'us'.  What most people don't know is that we actually see about 59% of the Moon's surface due to a 'wobble' in the Moon's 'spin'.

Conventional wisdom has it that the reason we only see half (59%) of the Moon's surface is due to the Moon's rotation around its axis matches the Moon's orbital speed around the Earth.

You know those seas (Mare)?  It was found during the Lunar Orbiter program in the 1960's that there are Mascons in them - concentrations of mass.  They were discovered by accident while the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft were orbiting the Moon to take photographs of the Moon's surface for the later Apollo missions.

During each orbit, the spacecraft's orbit would suddenly dip for no reason (no input by the spacecraft such as thruster firings).  Someone eventually mapped where these dips were taking place and found they matched the locations of the Mare.  Only one 'dip' occured on the far side; the rest occured on the near side.

The mascons are believed to be asteroids.

It turns out that the near side is heavier than the far side.  So, I suggest that the reason we see only half (59%) of the Moon's surface is due to the pendulum effect and that the wobble is an artifact of that effect.

Remember that all but one of the mascons is on the near side.  I believe the asteroids must have all hit the Moon at the same time (with the exception of the mascon on the far side).  If not, the Mare would be randomly distributed over the entire surface of the Moon.

It might also be possible to determine when the strikes occured by working out how fast the wobble is slowing down.

Like I said; just a thought.