The Soviet probe Luna 3 first photographed the Moon’s far side in 1959.
Launched on 4 October 1959, Luna 3 passed behind the Moon and used an onboard camera to capture images of the hemisphere permanently hidden from Earth. It transmitted the photographs back to Soviet ground stations by radio.
The far side is sometimes incorrectly called the “dark side,” but it receives sunlight just as the near side does. It is hidden from Earth because the Moon is tidally locked, rotating once for each orbit around our planet.
Luna 3’s images were technically limited and covered only part of the far side, but they revealed a landscape with far fewer dark maria than the familiar near side. Later missions produced much clearer maps and photographs.