The far side of the Moon, sometimes erroneously called the "dark side of the Moon", is the lunar hemisphere that is permanently turned away, and not visible from the surface of the Earth. The far hemisphere was first photographed by the Soviet Luna 3 probe in 1959, and was first directly observed by human eyes when the Apollo 8 mission orbited the Moon in 1968. The rugged terrain is distinguished by a multitude of crater impacts, as well as relatively few lunar maria. It includes the second largest known impact feature in the Solar System, the South Pole-Aitken basin. The far side has been suggested as a potential location for a large radio telescope, as it would be shielded from possible radio interference from Earth. To date, there has been no ground exploration of the far side of the Moon.
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