NASA unveils 'dark side' of the Moon

WASHINGTON: NASA has released an incredibly detailed video of what the Moon looks on the side that is never visible from the Earth.

As the Earth spins around and around, it only ever faces one side of our orbiting Moon.

Just like the near side, the far side goes through a complete cycle of phases. But the terrain of the far side is quite different, NASA said.

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 far side is also home to one of the largest and oldest impact features in the solar system, the South Pole-Aitken basin.

"The far side was first seen in a handful of grainy images returned by the Soviet Luna 3 probe, which swung around the Moon in October, 1959," NASA said in a statement.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched fifty years later, and since then it has returned hundreds of terabytes of data, allowing LRO scientists to create extremely detailed and accurate maps of the far side.