NASA Snaps Pics of the Dark Side of the Moon

NASA has been able to capture the dark side of the moon in a whole new light.

A camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured images of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month, according to NASA. The so-called “dark side” of the moon is never visible from Earth.

It's not the first image of the dark side, however. The Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft returned the first images of the moon’s dark side in 1959 and several NASA missions since have captured the moon's dark side. But because the moon is locked in a tidal orbit with Earth, terrestrial viewers always see the same side. 

“It is surprising how much brighter Earth is than the moon," said Adam Szabo, DSCOVR project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland in a press release. "Our planet is a truly brilliant object in dark space compared to the lunar surface.”

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