for-all-mankind:

A photographic history of the far side of the Moon – from Luna to DSCOVR.

DSCOVR’s image of the Moon transiting Earth last month gave us a rare glimpse of the face of our nearest celestial body we almost never see. In fact, it wasn’t even until 1959 that we saw our first images of the lunar far side.

Luna 3, launched by the Soviet union on October 4,1959, made its closest approach late on October 6. After passing over the Lunar south pole at 6,200 kilometers, Luna 3 began to fly over the far side October 7. Over the course of 40 minutes, 29 photographs were taken. Although the quality was subpar compared to later lunar imagery taken by both American and Soviet craft, the images were used to create a tentative first-ever Atlas of the Far Side of the Moon. Luna 3’s first image of the lunar far side can be seen in the first image above, taken at 3:50 UTC on October 7, 1959. Below, the first-ever map of the far side based off of Lune 3 images, 1960.

The American missions of Lunar Orbiter 4 and 5 in 1967 mapped the far side by high-resolution cameras. However, it wasn’t until December, 1968 that a human being directly saw the far side for the first time. Apollo 8 orbited the Moon ten times, allowing its three-member crew to observe both sides of the Moon up close for the first time.

Although no mission placed a human on the surface of the far side, all subsequent Apollo landing missions observed the far side while they were in lunar orbit. Apollo 16 captured the second image above on April 16, 1972.

Multiple lunar spacecraft launched by various nations after the Apollo missions have imaged the far side. NASA’s Clementine mission in 1994 created the first LIDAR map of the entire lunar surface, which can be seen below. This helped scientists understand the precise topographical characteristics of the entire Moon. Clementine’s photographic maps were improved upon in 2009 by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which took the third image seen above.

While DSCOVR itself is not studying the Moon, orbital mechanics will allow the Moon to pass within the spacecraft’s field of view twice a year. Since DSCOVR is stationed at the L1 LaGrange point one million miles away from Earth, and the Moon orbits 250,000 miles away from Earth, the spacecraft is in a unique position to capture the lunar far side. Because L1 is located between the Earth and sun, the entire sunlit side of the Earth and Moon are visible. DSCOVR took the image of the Moon and Earth on July 16, seen as the last image above.