For thousands of years, the moon inspired humans from afar, but the bright beacon in Earth’s night sky located more than 200,000 miles away remained out of reach. That all changed on Sept. 13, 1959, when the former Soviet Union’s uncrewed spacecraft, Luna 2, landed on the moon’s surface.

The Luna 2 probe created a crater when it touched down on the moon between the lunar regions of Mare Imbrium and Mare Serenitatis, according to NASA.

That pivotal, lunar dust-stirring moment signaled the beginning of humanity’s endeavors to explore the moon and some scientists now suggest it was also the start of a new geological epoch or period of time in history, called the Lunar Anthropocene, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Dec. 8.

“The idea is much the same as the discussion of the Anthropocene on Earth, the exploration of how much humans have impacted our planet,” said the paper’s lead author Justin Holcomb, a postdoctoral researcher with the Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas.

The idea of the Lunar Anthropocene arrives at a time when civil space agencies and commercial entities are showing a renewed interest in returning to the moon, or for some, landing on it for the first time.

The paper’s authors argue that the moon’s environment, already shaped by humans during the beginning of the Lunar Anthropocene, will be altered in more drastic ways as exploration increases.

The moon is littered with the traces of exploration.

Since Luna 2’s landing, more than a hundred spacecraft have crashed and made soft landings on the moon and “humans have caused surface disturbances in at least 58 additional locations on the lunar surface,” according to the paper. Touching down on the lunar surface is incredibly difficult, as evidenced by numerous crashes that have made their mark and created new craters.

With the arrival of humans came a plethora of objects that have been left behind, including scientific equipment for experiments, spacecraft components, flags, photographs, golf balls, bags of human excrement and religious texts, according to the paper.

From Earth, the moon appears unchanged. After all, it doesn’t have a protective atmosphere or magnetosphere like our life-sustaining world does. Micrometeorites regularly hit the surface because the moon has no way of shielding itself from space rocks.

Declaring a Lunar Anthropocene could make it clear that the moon is changing in ways it wouldn’t naturally due to human exploration, the researchers said.

“Cultural processes are starting to outstrip the natural background of geological processes on the moon,” Holcomb said. “These processes involve moving sediments, which we refer to as ‘regolith,’ on the moon. Typically, these processes include meteoroid impacts and mass movement events, among others. However, when we consider the impact of rovers, landers and human movement, they significantly disturb the regolith.”

The moon also has features like a delicate exosphere composed of dust and gas and ice inside permanently shadowed areas that are vulnerable and could be disturbed by continued explorations, the authors wrote in their paper.

“Future missions must consider mitigating deleterious effects on lunar environments,” it said.