Mission Summary
Luna 3 was a groundbreaking Soviet mission that revealed a part of the Moon humanity had never seen before. Launched on October 4, 1959, the spacecraft flew around the Moon and captured the first photographs of the lunar far side, the hemisphere that always faces away from Earth.
Using an innovative onboard imaging system, Luna 3 photographed the far side on October 7, 1959, then developed the film automatically inside the spacecraft and transmitted the images back to Earth. Although the pictures were low quality by modern standards, they showed a dramatically different landscape with fewer large dark plains than the familiar near side.
The mission mapped about 70 percent of the far side and led to the naming of many newly discovered lunar features. Luna 3 transformed humanity’s understanding of the Moon and became one of the most important early achievements in robotic space exploration.
Sources and notes can be found on the Sources page.
