The far side of the Moon is the lunar hemisphere that always faces away from Earth, opposite to the near side, because of synchronous rotation in the Moon's orbit. Compared to the near side, the far side's terrain is rugged, with a multitude of impact craters and relatively few flat and dark lunar maria ("seas"), giving it an appearance closer to other barren places in the Solar System such as Mercury and Callisto. It has one of the largest craters in the Solar System, the South Pole–Aitken basin. The hemisphere has sometimes been called the "dark side of the Moon", where "dark" means "unknown" instead of "lacking sunlight" each side of the Moon experiences two weeks of sunlight while the opposite side experiences two weeks of night.
About 18 percent of the far side is occasionally visible from Earth due to libration. The remaining 82 percent remained unobserved until 1959, when it was photographed by the Soviet Luna 3 space probe. The Soviet Academy of Sciences published the first atlas of the far side in 1960. The Apollo 8 astronauts were the first humans to see the far side in person when they orbited the Moon in 1968. All crewed and uncrewed soft landings had taken place on the near side of the Moon, until 3 January 2019 when the Chang'e 4 spacecraft made the first landing on the far side.
Astronomers have suggested installing a large radio telescope on the far side, where the Moon would shield it from possible radio interference from Earth.
Tidal forces from Earth have slowed the Moon's rotation to the point where the same side is always facing the Earth—a phenomenon called tidal locking. The other face, most of which is never visible from the Earth, is therefore called the "far side of the Moon". Over time, some crescent-shaped edges of the far side can be seen due to libration. In total, 59 percent of the Moon's surface is visible from Earth at one time or another. Useful observation of the parts of the far side of the Moon occasionally visible from Earth is difficult because of the low viewing angle from Earth (they cannot be observed "full on").
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
The objective of the course is to present with different viewpoints, the lessons learned which lead to the decisions in the space exploration and their consequences today and for the decades to come.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ˈnæsə) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. Established in 1958, NASA succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give the U.S. space development effort a distinctly civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science.
The lunar maria (ˈmɑːri.ə ; mare ˈmɑːreɪ ) are large, dark, basaltic plains on Earth's Moon, formed by ancient asteroid impacts on the far side on the Moon that triggered volcanic activity on the opposite (near) side. They were dubbed maria, by early astronomers who mistook them for actual seas. They are less reflective than the "highlands" as a result of their iron-rich composition, and hence appear dark to the naked eye. The maria cover about 16% of the lunar surface, mostly on the side visible from Earth.
Luna 3, or E-2A No.1 () was a Soviet spacecraft launched in 1959 as part of the Luna programme. It was the first mission to photograph the far side of the Moon and the third Soviet space probe to be sent to the neighborhood of the Moon. Though it returned rather poor pictures, the historic, never-before-seen views of the far side of the Moon caused excitement and interest when they were published around the world, and a tentative Atlas of the Far Side of the Moon was created after image processing improved the pictures.
Stray light contamination reduces considerably the precision of photometric of faint stars for low altitude space-borne observatories. When measuring faint objects, the necessity of coping with stray light contamination arises in order to avoid systematic ...
Data visualization is a recent domain that founds his roots in the eighties, but its history dates back to more ancient times in other representations such as diagrams, drawings, or maps. In particular, data visualization is hard to take advantage of the h ...
It was suggested that multilayered accretionary rims composed of ferrous olivine, andradite, wollastonite, salite-hedenbergitic pyroxenes, nepheline, and Ni-rich sulfides around Allende calcium aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs) are aggregates of gas-solid co ...