In 1959, the Soviet Luna 3 probe swung around the far side of the Moon and took 29 grainy photographs of a hemisphere humans had never seen, then developed the film onboard and scanned the negatives with a flying-spot beam to radio them back across nearly 480,000 kilometres of vacuum

In October 1959, the Soviet Luna 3 probe took the first photographs of the Moon's far side, developed the film in a tiny onboard darkroom, and scanned the prints to radio them back to Earth — a chain of engineering improbabilities that redrew the map of the solar system. The post In 1959, the Soviet Luna 3 probe swung around the far side of the Moon and took 29 grainy photographs of a hemisphere humans had never seen, then developed the film onboard and scanned the negatives with a flying-spot b