Comments
NASA has released an incredibly detailed video of what the Moon looks on the side that is never visible from the Earth.
As the Earth spins around and around, it only ever faces one side of our orbiting Moon.
Just like the near side, the far side goes through a complete cycle of phases. But the terrain of the far side is quite different, NASA said.
It lacks the large dark spots, called maria, that make up the familiar ‘Man in the Moon’ on the near side.
Instead, craters of all sizes crowd together over the entire far side.
The far side is also home to one of the largest and oldest impact features in the solar system, the South Pole-Aitken basin.
“The far side was first seen in a handful of grainy images returned by the Soviet Luna 3 probe, which swung around the Moon in October 1959,” NASA said in a statement.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched 50 years later, and since then it has returned hundreds of terabytes of data, allowing LRO scientists to create extremely detailed and accurate maps of the far side.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.