Far side of the moon

Far side of the moon

No, not the “dark” side of the moon. The side facing away from us is the far side. Because the moon is tidally locked the Earth, we never get to see more than about 60% of the surface. Lunar libration allows us to see slightly more than 50%.

The first images were returned from the far side the Soviet Luna 3 probe in 1959. It wasn’t until Apollo 8 in 1969 that the far side was first directly observed by human eyes.

Because the soviets were the first to map it, they got to name all the craters, mountains, mare and other landforms.

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