EUROPE: The Pink Floyd album aside, the “dark” side of the moon is not actually dark—it receives just as much sunlight as the hemisphere of the moon that we can see from Earth. It’s “dark,” because it’s mysterious, as it has never been explored by humans before.
Until now, that is. Wu Weiren, the chief engineer for China’s Lunar Exploration Program, told Chinese Central Television (link in Chinese) that the country is planning to land its Chang’e-4 probe on the moon’s “dark” side. “We probably will choose a site that is more difficult to land and more technically challenging,” he said, according to GBTimes. “Our next move probably will see some spacecraft land on the far side of the moon.”
The reason that the dark, or far, side of the moon, never faces Earth is a phenomenon known as “tidal locking.” Over the course of millions of years, the Earth’s gravity slowed down the moon’s rotation, matching it to the speed of its orbit.
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