Let's get the terminology out of the way first. There isn't really a "dark side." It’s just the far side of the moon. It gets plenty of sunlight—it just never faces us. Because of a phenomenon called tidal locking, the Moon takes the same amount of time to rotate on its axis as it does to orbit Earth. We see the same face, always. For centuries, humans stared up at that silver disc and wondered if the other half was a lush paradise, a jagged wasteland, or maybe just more of the same. Honestly, it turns out the far side is a completely different beast than the side we see from a backyard telescope.
The mystery began to unravel in 1959. That's when the Soviet Union's Luna 3 probe snapped the first grainy, noisy photos of the lunar "backside." The world was stunned. Scientists expected to see more of those vast, dark "seas" (maria) that make up the Man in the Moon. Instead, they saw a battered, highland-dominated crust that looked more like a golf ball than the familiar face we knew. It was rugged. It was chaotic. It was weirdly devoid of the smooth volcanic plains that dominate the near side.
Why the far side of the moon looks so different
Basically, the moon is lopsided. This is what geologists call the Lunar Farside Anomaly. If you look at the near side, about 31% of the surface is covered in maria—those dark spots created by ancient lava flows. On the far side? It's about 1%. That's a massive discrepancy. Researchers like Jason Wright at Penn State have proposed that this happened because the Earth was incredibly hot right after the moon formed. Since the moon was much closer then, the near side stayed molten longer, while the far side cooled down and built a much thicker crust.
Think of it like a piece of toast. One side was facing the "toaster" (Earth), and the other side was facing the cold void. The crust on the far side is roughly 20 kilometers thicker than the near side. Because it's so thick, those deep-seated magma chambers couldn't easily punch through when meteors struck. This created a landscape defined by massive impact craters rather than smooth volcanic basins.
The South Pole-Aitken Basin
This is the "big kahuna" of lunar features. It’s one of the largest, deepest, and oldest known impact basins in the entire solar system. It’s roughly 2,500 kilometers wide. If you dropped it on the United States, it would stretch from the East Coast all the way to the Rocky Mountains.
Deep inside this basin, there’s something strange. In 2019, NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission detected a massive "blob" of metal buried hundreds of miles beneath the surface. It’s five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii. It might be the iron-nickel core of the asteroid that slammed into the moon billions of years ago. It’s just sitting there, a giant metallic footprint from a cosmic collision.
What China’s Chang’e 4 found on the ground
For decades, we only saw the far side from orbit. Then, in 2019, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) pulled off a feat no one else had: they landed the Chang’e 4 mission in the Von Kármán crater. Communication was a nightmare. Since the moon itself blocks direct radio signals to Earth, they had to park a relay satellite called Queqiao in a specific orbit to bounce the data back.
📖 Related: The Graph of x Squared: Why This Simple Curve Runs the Modern World
The Yutu-2 rover found that the "soil" (regolith) on the far side is different. It’s more like a deep, loose sand compared to the near side. They also found "gel-like" substances in a small crater. After a year of excitement, it turned out to be impact melt—glassy rock created by the heat of a meteor strike. No aliens. No secret bases. Just fascinating, high-pressure geology.
The silence of the void
Perhaps the most valuable thing on the far side of the moon isn't a mineral. It’s the silence.
Earth is a very noisy neighbor. Our radios, TV stations, satellites, and cell towers create a constant fog of electromagnetic interference. This makes it hard for astronomers to hear the faint signals from the "Dark Ages" of the universe—the period before the first stars formed. The far side of the moon acts as a 2,000-mile-thick shield. It is the most "radio-quiet" place in the inner solar system.
Myths vs. Reality
People love a good conspiracy. We’ve all seen the YouTube videos claiming there are towering glass spires or Nazi bases hidden in the shadows. Let's be real: we have high-resolution imagery of every square inch of the lunar surface thanks to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
- Secret Bases: We'd see the heat signatures and the shadows. We don't.
- Alien Monoliths: Most of these turn out to be "boulders." The famous "Moon Hut" spotted by Yutu-2 in 2021 was actually just a small, oddly shaped rock on the rim of a crater. Perspective is a funny thing.
- The Atmosphere: Some old theories suggested there might be a thin atmosphere on the far side. Nope. It’s a vacuum, just like the rest of the moon.
That said, there is something there that shouldn't be overlooked: water ice. In the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) near the poles, temperatures never rise above -250 degrees Fahrenheit. Water delivered by comets billions of years ago hasn't evaporated because the sun never touches it. It’s sitting there as "dirty ice," and it's basically the gold of the next space race.
Why we are going back
The far side is the gateway to the rest of the solar system. Because it’s geologically distinct, it holds the "memory" of the early Earth-Moon system better than the near side. It hasn't been resurfaced by lava as much. It's a pristine record of the early solar system’s violence.
If we want to build a moon base, the far side offers the best spot for a radio telescope. Imagine a telescope made of dipoles laid out across the lunar soil, capable of peering back 13 billion years. But it’s also harder. You need a constellation of satellites just to talk to your rover. You need power systems that can survive a 14-day lunar night without direct sunlight.
Actionable insights for the lunar enthusiast
If you're fascinated by the far side of the moon, you don't have to wait for the next NASA press release to get involved. The landscape of lunar exploration is changing fast.
Track the missions in real-time. Don't just wait for the news. Use tools like the NASA LRO Quickmap. It's an interactive browser-based map where you can zoom in on specific far-side craters like Tsiolkovskiy or Mendeleev. You can see the actual terrain data used by scientists.
Join a citizen science project. Platforms like Zooniverse often host projects where everyday people help classify craters or identify interesting features in lunar imagery. You might be the first person to spot a fresh impact site that wasn't there a month ago.
Understand the "Radio Quiet Zone" legislation.
There is currently a massive debate in the scientific community about protecting the far side. As companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin plan lunar constellations, they risk ruining the radio silence. If you care about astronomy, keep an eye on the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) efforts to designate the far side as a protected "Quiet Zone."
Investigate the samples.
In June 2024, China's Chang'e 6 mission successfully returned the first-ever physical samples from the far side. These rocks are currently being analyzed. Watch for papers published in Nature or Science over the next 12 months. These will provide the first chemical confirmation of why the far side’s crust is so thick.
The far side isn't a place of monsters or magic. It’s a giant, silent laboratory. It’s a record of where we came from and a quiet sanctuary for where our telescopes might go next. We’ve finally stopped just wondering what’s back there and started digging into the dirt to find out.