Is the far side of the moon impacted by more space debris as it is not shielded by Earth?

On average, there are as many impacts on the near side as on the far side. The Earth will scatter nearly as many objects into the moon as it deflects away (there's some anisotropy because most objects are in the ecliptic and can be scattered away from the ecliptic).

There is, however, one difference: comets passing near the Earth may get broken up by tidal forces into a great many small objects, resulting in a distributed impact on the near side, whereas this won't happen on the far side. It's speculated that this is why the Maria are unequally distributed.

Hardly any of the craters on the Moon are due to volcanic activity.

However, as far as I know there is no good reason why the far side of the Moon would receive a significantly higher rate of impacts. You might think that the Earth would shield the near side of the Moon from impacts but remember that the Earth's gravity also lenses the paths of objects traveling near it.

No, it is roughly even. The leading indicator as to which "side" of an object receives more meteorite damage, has to do with the objects leading edge as it is in orbit.

One would assume that because the Moon is tidally locked with Earth, it should be more heavily cratered on the (as viewed from Earth) east side (and equally on that same side on the back half of the Moon), however, because the Earth-Moon system plow through space together, orbiting the Sun at a much faster velocity through space than the Moon does alone orbiting the Earth.

The leading Edge is the edge where the Sun is rising... on Earth, that leading edge covers the entire globe in 24 hours... on the Moon, it takes about a month, but it still receives equal probability of bombardment.

Space debris impact is precisely why there is more crater damage to the far side of the moon. Not due to volcanic activity, that happens equally well on both sides.

Remember the scale model. If Earth were a typical classroom globe, the moon would be a baseball, all the way across the classroom.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c...

Any object headed to the near side of the moon would easily get deflected or even caught by the Earth, and we would see meteor sights (what we see as "shooting stars").

They are from meteors. Even the smallest metoers will leave impact craters on the moon, since there is no atmosphere there to burn them up.

Go to Nasa.gov, ask them, and get a perfectly accurate response based on professional knowledge.

That's what I would do.