Definitely no.
The far side of the moon is always showing us the same face. It’s like the moon is stuck in a staring contest with us.
This happens because the moon spins around its own axis at the same rate that it orbits around Earth.
It’s called being “tidally locked” and it means that one side of the moon is always facing Earth and the other side is always facing away.
But sometimes, we can get a glimpse of the Earth from the edge of the moon’s far side, thanks to a thing called lunar libration.
That’s when the moon wobbles a bit on its axis and lets us peek around the corner. It’s like when you’re trying to spy on someone without being noticed, but you can’t help moving your head a little.
The Earth can be seen from some parts of the moon’s far side during these times, but not from the center.
The far side of the moon is pretty different from the near side, by the way. It’s older, more cratered, and less radioactive.
It also has fewer dark spots called maria, which are made of hardened lava.
Scientists think that the near side cooled down slower than the far side, and that’s why it has more volcanic activity. The far side also gets less sunlight than the near side, because it’s closer to the sun when it’s full moon and farther away when it’s new moon. Furthermore, Can the Earth ever be seen from the far side of the moon?
Now, the first time we saw the far side of the moon was in 1959, when a Soviet spacecraft called Luna 3 took some pictures of it.
Since then, we’ve sent more probes and even some astronauts to explore it. One of them was NASA’s GRAIL mission, which had two spacecraft orbiting the moon and mapping its gravity field.
Can the Earth ever be seen from the far side of the moon?
No, never. Actually, the far side of the moon is about 40% of the moon since the moon wobbles a bit as it orbits the Earth, we can see some of the edges of the far side.
Likewise, if you’re on the near side of the moon, the Earth will always be somewhere in the sky overhead. If you’re at the center of the near side, the Earth will always be pretty much straight overhead. The Earth goes through phases just like the moon so during a “new Earth,” the dark (night) side of the Earth will face the moon so the Earth won’t actually be visible – but it is there. The phases of the Earth are opposite those of the moon so when there’s a new Earth on the moon, there’s a full moon on the Earth.
If you were at the edge of the near and far sides of the moon, the Earth would always be low on the horizon, so you’d be able to see something like an Earthrise or Earthset as the Earth bobbed up and down on the horizon.
The Earth would be torn to pieces due to inertial forces.
Otherwise, if you imagine a magical scenario where we wake up one day and the Earth has changed its rotational direction, I’d think weather patterns would be seriously disrupted – places that are now desert would become jungles and vice-versa. It would surely mess with human society, navigation, GPS, satellites, animal migrations, etc.
All planets spin in a clockwise direction when viewed from their north pole except Venus, which rotates counterclockwise. Astronomers believe that at some point, a colliding celestial body tilted Venus so far off its original position that it is now upside down.
Another outlier is Uranus, which is tilted so far that it essentially orbits the sun on its side, with the axis of its spin nearly pointing at the Sun. Again, astronomers believe something must have struck it long ago.
