Crossing into the Lunar Farside

A CLOSER LOOK

art002e010014 (April 6, 2026) – A bright portion of the Moon is visible in this image. If you look closely, you can see linear, pitted features known as “crater chains” radiating from the Orientale basin, an impact crater with a patch of ancient lava at its center, visible in the bottom center of the image. These crater chains formed about 3.8 billion years ago, when rocks spewed from the collision that formed Orientale landed in lines extending away from the crater. These chains are found near other large craters on the Moon, but we don’t get to see them on Earth because our planet’s crust has been turned over so many times through plate tectonics and largely erased by rain, wind, and ice. In the upper left corner of the Moon disk is a line called the terminator, the boundary between luna

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