Today's Trivia

🧠 Today's Trivia Humans actually first saw the far side of the Moon in the space age, around the 1930s! 🌕 Before 1959, humans had never directly seen what the far side of the Moon looked like. This is because the Moon's 'rotation period' and 'orbital period around Earth' are roughly the same, so it always shows the same face to Earth. It wasn't until the Soviet Union's Luna 3 probe flew to the far side of the Moon and took pictures that humans first learned what the far side looked like. And the photos led scientists to discover that the topography of the Moon's far side is very different from the familiar near side. The far side has a large number of craters, and relatively fewer smooth lunar maria.