What's on the other side of the moon?

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Looking up at the silver orb of the Moon, you may be able to recognize familiar shadows and shapes on his face from one night to the next. You see the same view of the moon that our first ancestors followed after sunset.

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Only one side of the spherical Moon is never visible from the Earth – it was not until 1959, when the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 gravitated around the Moon and sent images to the house that human beings were able to to see the "far side" of the Moon for the first time. time.

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Comparison of humanity's first glimpse of the hidden side of the moon and the same view thanks to LRO data 50 years later.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, CC BY

A phenomenon called tidal lock is responsible for the consistency of the view. The Earth and its Moon are nearby and thus exert an important gravitational force. These tidal forces slow rotations of both bodies. They locked the rotation of the Moon in phase with its orbital period relatively soon after its formation – following a collision between an object the size of Mars and the proto-Earth, 100 million years after the fusion of the solar system.

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The orbital period and the rotation period of the Moon have the same duration.

Now, the Moon travels around the Earth at the same time as it takes to rotate around its own axis: about 28 days. From the Earth, we always see the same face of the Moon; from the moon, the earth remains motionless in the sky.

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Buzz Aldrin descends from the lunar module on the surface of the Moon on July 20, 1969.
JSC / NASA, CC BY

The near face of the Moon is well studied because we can see it. The astronauts landed near the moon to communicate with NASA here on Earth. All samples of Apollo missions come from the near side.

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Although the farthest part of the moon is not visible from our point of view, and with all due respect to Pink Floyd, it is not accurate to call it the dark side of the moon. All sides of the moon live night and day as we do here on Earth. All parties have the same number of days and nights during a month. A lunar day lasts about two terrestrial weeks.

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With modern satellites, astronomers have completely mapped the lunar surface. A Chinese mission, Chang'e 4, is currently exploring the Aitken Basin on the other side of the Moon – the first mission of its kind in the region. The researchers hope that Chang'e 4 will help answer questions about the characteristics of the crater surface and check if things can grow in lunar soil. Beresheet, a privately funded Israeli mission, began as a mission to compete for the Google Lunar X Prize. Although it crashed during a landing attempt earlier this month, the Beresheet team still won the Moon Shot Award.

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Being away from civilization means that the dark side of the moon is "obscure on the radio". The researchers can thus measure the weak signals of the universe that would otherwise be drowned. Chang'e 4, for example, will be able to observe low-frequency radio light from the Sun or beyond what is impossible to detect here on Earth because of human activities, such as television and radio programs and the like. forms of communication signals. Low frequency radios go back in time to the very first stars and black holes, allowing astronomers to better understand how the structures of the universe began to form.

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The arrows indicate the position of the Chang'e lander 4 on the floor of the crater of the Moon Von Kármán. The pointed crater behind and to the left of the landing site is 12,800 feet wide and 1,970 feet deep.
NASA / GSFC / State University of Arizona, CC BY

Rover missions are also studying all sides of the Moon as space scientists prepare for future human missions, relying on the resources of the moon to help humanity get to Mars. For example, water – discovered by NASA's LCROSS satellite under the north and south poles of the moon in 2009 – can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen and used for fuel and breathing.

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The researchers are getting closer to exploring the polar craters of the moon, some of which have never seen the light of day – literally. They are deep and in the right place to never let the sun shine on the floor of the crater. There are certainly dark parts of the moon, but the far side is not part of it.

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Wayne Schlingman, Director of Arne Slettebak Planetarium, State University of Ohio

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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