Why can we never see the far side of the moon from earth?

The moon orbits the earth – as everyone now knows. It takes about 27.32 days to complete each circuit. At the same time it is also spinning on its axis. This takes almost exactly the same length of time. So while the moon is revolving round the earth, it is also spinning at the same speed. This means that the same face is turned towards us all the time.

No man had ever seen the far side of the moon until 1959, when a Russian space probe went behind it for the first time and sent back the photo graphs of the hidden half. In some ways they were a bit of an anticlimax. There was not a man in the moon. Nor was it made out of blue cheese. The far side of the moon looks pretty much like the side we can see. The main difference is that it does not have any large dark plains known as ‘seas’. These have never had any water so they are not seas as we know them. But they have level surfaces like the oceans on earth.

 

Picture Credit : Google

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