NASA unveiled an almost two-minute dark side video of the moon. In the animated clip, the agency revealed the far hidden side of the moon that has been an astronomical mystery for years.
NASA's dark side video of the moon was released on Feb. 4, USA Today reported. By using the mapping data collected from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) satellite, it showed the moon's appearance, in remarkable detail, on the side that's not visible from the Earth.
The dark side video released by NASA has issued computer-generated images of the moon's far side. For the first time, it gave the world a peek of the moon's hidden surface. The animated clip came 50 years after a 1959 landmark mission in which the far side of the moon was first photographed by a Soviet lunar probe, Luna 3, The Daily Express revealed.
NASA's dark side video showed never-before-seen images of the moon with an up close shot and the Earth in the background. The picture was said to be a reversal of the usual terrestrial telescope images taken from the satellite.
According to NASA scientists, the images revealed the little-known hemisphere of the moon, with fewer of the familiar shadowy patches that are visible from Earth. They explained the moon is "tidally locked," so observers on Earth can only see half of it.
"Just like the near side, the far side goes through a complete cycle of phases," NASA stated. "But the terrain of the far side is quite different. It lacks the large dark spots, called maria, that make up the familiar Man in the Moon on the near side."
"Instead, craters of all sizes crowd together over the entire far side," the space agency added. "The far side is also home to one of the largest and oldest impact features in the solar system, the South Pole-Aitken basin."
The five-year $500 million LRO project has returned hundreds of terabytes of data. Tech Times reported the mission was launched in 2009, allowing scientists to create extremely detailed and accurate maps of the moon's far side.
The space agency's Scientific Visualization Studio stitched the obtained images to create NASA's dark side video of the moon.
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