[Soviet View of Far Side of the Moon]

Publisher TASS (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union) Russian, founded 1902
 Publisher United Press International American

Not on view

Although blurry and heavily retouched, this photograph, released by the Soviet wire service TASS and published around the globe, represents a groundbreaking moment in the history of lunar imagery. In October 1959 the USSR launched Luna 3, a small spacecraft equipped with a dual-lens 35 mm camera and an onboard image-processing system and scanner. The mission objective was to capture and transmit the first photographs of the far side of the moon. The images it beamed back revealed a terrain starkly different from the near side: rugged and densely cratered, with only two visible maria (respectively dubbed the Sea of Moscow and the Sea of Dreams).

[Soviet View of Far Side of the Moon], TASS (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union), Gelatin silver print

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