For thousands of years, people on Earth could look up at the Moon but see only one side of it. That changed on Oct. 7, 1959, when a Soviet spacecraft photographed the Moon’s far side for the first time.
The spacecraft, Luna 3, had launched from the Soviet Union just three days earlier. After passing around the Moon, it turned its cameras toward the hemisphere that no human had ever seen. Beginning at 3:30 a.m. Universal Time on Oct. 7, Luna 3 took 29 photographs over about 40 minutes, covering roughly 70% of the Moon’s far side.
What made the mission especially unusual was that Luna 3 essentially carried its own tiny photographic laboratory. The spacecraft used 35mm film, developed and dried the film aboard the probe, then converted the images into electrical signals that were transmitted back to Earth by radio.
The photographs were grainy and streaked, but they revealed something unexpected. The far side looked dramatically different from the familiar side facing Earth. It was heavily cratered and had very few of the large, dark volcanic plains known as maria that are prominent on the near side.
The event also helped correct a common misconception about the so-called “dark side of the Moon.” The far side is not permanently dark; it receives sunlight just like the side visible from Earth. It was simply the side humans had never been able to see directly.
For the first time, on Oct. 7, 1959, humanity got a glimpse of the Moon’s hidden face—and discovered that the side we had never seen was not quite what we expected.
