![]() ![]() It was almost immediately evident that the dark patches that make the face of the Man in the Moon on the near side are almost completely absent on the far side. Those six images covered 70 percent of the far side and opened a whole new perspective on the lunar surface. Although only 17 of the 29 taken were transmitted successfully back to Earth, of which six were considered good enough for publication, they proved to be a revelation. The spacecraft, using a combination of two camera systems, one wide-field and one narrow-field but higher resolution, and a crude onboard scanner, could then transmit the processed images, which were spot-scanned from the photographs, back to the receiving station in the former Soviet Union. Ironically, the film used had been stolen from American spy balloons, as it had to be sturdy and radiation-hardened. Luna 3 took 29 film images of the far side in total, which were photographically developed, fixed and dried on board - remember, this was long before multi mega-pixel cameras. In 1959, barely two years after placing Sputnik 1 in orbit, Russian engineers managed to send the spacecraft, which was crude by today's standards, into orbit around the moon and, for the first time, we got a good look at the mysterious far side. ![]() Our first glimpse of the mysterious far side came early in the space race, courtesy of the Soviet Union's Luna 3 spacecraft almost 60 years ago. Charlie Duke became the youngest person to walk on the moon during the Apollo 16 mission. ![]()
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