Pink Floyd lied to you. Well, not really, but the title of their iconic album definitely cemented a massive scientific misunderstanding in the public consciousness. There is no permanent "dark side." The moon is tidally locked, meaning we only ever see one face from Earth, but the back half gets plenty of sunlight. It’s actually called the far side. And honestly? The first pictures from the dark side of the moon were a total mess, but they changed everything we thought we knew about our closest celestial neighbor.
Space is big. Cold. Empty. But the far side of the moon is crowded with history we can't see from our backyards.
The Grainy Soviet Photos That Started It All
In 1959, the world was a different place. Computers took up entire rooms. People still thought the moon’s hidden side might look just like the side we see—full of vast, dark "seas" of basaltic lava called maria. Then the Soviet Union launched Luna 3. It wasn't a high-def DSLR. It was basically a flying darkroom.
The process was insane. The probe took 29 photographs on special temperature-resistant film. It then developed, fixed, and dried that film inside the spacecraft while orbiting the moon. To get those images back to Earth, it scanned them with a light beam and transmitted them via radio frequency.
When the first pictures from the dark side of the moon finally flickered onto screens in Moscow, scientists were baffled. It didn't look like the near side at all. Where were the smooth plains? Where were the "seas" where Man in the Moon lives? Instead, they saw a battered, highland wasteland. It was 99% craters. Rugged. Jagged. Chaotic. This was the first hint that the moon is asymmetrical, a mystery that geologists are still arguing about today.
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Why the Far Side Looks So Beat Up
If you look at a photo of the near side, you see those large dark patches (maria). These were formed by ancient volcanic eruptions. But on the far side, those patches are almost entirely missing. Why?
It likely comes down to crust thickness.
NASA’s GRAIL mission (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) provided data suggesting the crust on the far side is significantly thicker than the side facing Earth. Imagine the moon’s interior as a bubbling pot of lava. On the Earth-facing side, the crust was thin enough for that lava to punch through and fill up impact basins. On the far side? The "shell" was too thick. The lava stayed trapped underground. This leaves the far side as a pristine record of every space rock that has slammed into it for billions of years. It’s a literal historical ledger of the solar system’s violence.
Apollo 8 and the Human Eye
No human had ever laid eyes on this hidden landscape until Christmas Eve, 1968. Bill Anders, Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell were orbiting the moon on Apollo 8. They weren't just taking photos; they were experiencing a profound loneliness. When they moved behind the moon, they lost all radio contact with Earth.
Total silence.
Anders described the far side as looking like a "dirty beach" or "whitish-grey sand." It wasn't beautiful in a traditional sense. It was bleak. Yet, it was during this mission that we got some of the most famous pictures from the dark side of the moon, even though the most famous shot—Earthrise—actually shows the Earth peeking over the lunar horizon.
China’s Chang’e 4 and the "Green" Breakthrough
Fast forward to January 2019. China does something no one else had dared: they landed a rover on the far side. The Chang’e 4 mission, featuring the Yutu-2 rover, touched down in the Von Kármán crater.
This was a massive technical hurdle. Since you can't send a radio signal through the solid mass of the moon, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) had to park a relay satellite called Queqiao in a specific "Lagrange point" to bounce signals back to Earth.
The pictures from the dark side of the moon sent back by Yutu-2 are stunningly high-resolution compared to the fuzzy Soviet grains of the 50s. They show a landscape that is yellowish-grey, covered in fine-grained regolith (moon dust). But the real kicker? They brought a "mini biosphere." For a brief moment, a cotton seed sprouted on the far side of the moon. It was the first time life had ever grown on another world, even if it only lasted a few days before the brutal lunar night froze it.
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The Radio Silence Advantage
There is a reason astronomers are obsessed with the far side. It’s the quietest place in the reachable universe.
Earth is loud. We are constantly screaming radio waves, television signals, and cellular data into space. This "electronic noise" makes it incredibly hard for radio telescopes to hear the faint signals from the early universe. But the moon acts as a massive physical shield. On the far side, you are blocked from every single radio transmission coming from Earth.
This is why there are serious plans to build a radio telescope in a far-side crater, like the proposed FARSIDE (Farside Array for Radio Science Investigations of the Dark ages and Exoplanets) project. We could literally "see" back to the Dark Ages of the universe—the time before the first stars even formed.
Common Misconceptions You Should Stop Believing
- It's always dark: No. It gets two weeks of daylight followed by two weeks of night. When we see a "New Moon" from Earth, the far side is fully illuminated.
- Aliens have a base there: This is a fun sci-fi trope (looking at you, Transformers), but our high-resolution LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) maps have mapped every square inch down to a resolution of about 50 centimeters. No alien monoliths. No secret Nazi bases. Just rocks.
- It's the "back" of the moon: Sort of. But because of "libration," a slight wobbling of the moon in its orbit, we actually see about 59% of the lunar surface over time. So we've always had a tiny, 9% peek at the "dark side" from Earth.
What’s Next for Lunar Photography?
We are entering a new era. NASA’s Artemis program aims to put humans back on the lunar surface, and this time, the far side is a primary candidate for long-term exploration. We aren't just looking for pretty pictures anymore; we're looking for water ice.
The South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side is one of the largest, deepest, and oldest impact craters in the solar system. Data suggests there might be water ice hidden in "permanently shadowed regions" (PSRs) within these craters. If we find it, it changes everything. Water means oxygen. Water means hydrogen for rocket fuel. The far side could become the "gas station" for missions to Mars.
How to View These Images Properly
If you want to see the real deal, don't just Google "moon photos." Most of what you see is the near side.
- Check the NASA LRO Gallery: This is the gold standard. You can zoom in on individual boulders on the far side.
- Look for "Phase-specific" imagery: Search for images taken during a New Moon. That's when the far side is most brilliantly lit.
- Search the CNSA archives: The images from the Yutu-2 rover offer a ground-level perspective that is vastly different from orbital shots.
The far side isn't a place of mystery because it's "dark." It’s a place of mystery because it’s a shield, a silent observer of the cosmos that has been protecting Earth from space debris for eons. Every crater in those pictures from the dark side of the moon represents a bullet the moon took for us.
Understanding this landscape is the first step toward living there. We've moved past the grainy, black-and-white film of the Cold War. Now, we're looking at the far side as a platform for the future of physics and deep-space travel. It’s not just a wasteland; it’s the ultimate quiet room for a loud species.
Actionable Next Steps
To truly appreciate the scale and detail of the far side, go to the NASA LROC (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera) Quickmap.
- Switch the projection to "Orthographic" and rotate the globe to 180 degrees longitude. This gives you a direct view of the far side center.
- Toggle the "Big Craters" layer to see just how much more volcanic activity occurred on our side versus the "hidden" side.
- Zoom into the Aitken Basin near the South Pole to see the rugged terrain that future astronauts will have to navigate.
This isn't just looking at pictures; it's scouting the next frontier of human civilization.