This is what the other side of the Moon looks like
Nasa have released a video on Youtube illustrating what the far side of the Moon looks like, that is the side that faces away from Earth.
The animation looks along an imaginary line connecting the Earth and the Moon to give us a spectacular view of our home from the planetary satellite, and it's all thanks to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that was launched in 2009 to map the lunar surface.
In it, you can see that there are no large dark spots, or maria, that make up the Man in the Moon which we can see on the near side.
Instead, there are many more craters and we can see the South Pole-Aitken basin, one of the largest and oldest impact features in the solar system. It is the slightly darker area that covers the bottom third of the Moon.
It's a great improvement on the images sent back by the Soviet Luna 3 probe in 1959.
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The Nasa video can be seen below, and you can find out more about the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter here.
