A picture of the far side of the moon.
EVER since the Soviet Union scored a Space Race milestone in 1959 when its Luna 3 probe returned the first photos of the moon's far side, it has been claimed that the USSR used film originally made by its Cold War nemesis - the United States.
Is there any truth to this, or is it just a myth that's endured for decades?
VERDICT:
TRUE
This is actually true; the film sent up with Luna 3 when it photographed the darkened side of the moon facing away from Earth was actually salvaged from high-altitude spy balloons sent over the USSR by the Americans as part of a secret programme called Project Genetrix.
This was confirmed by Nasa historian Asif Siddiqi in his publication “Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958–2016” where he explained how this happened.
“Post-Cold War revelations confirmed that the film type used on the AMS (camera), known as 'ASh' by the Soviets, was actually unexposed film that was repurposed from a CIA reconnaissance balloon (from Project Genetrix) that had drifted into Soviet territory in the late 1950s,” he said.
Siddiqi added that the film had been stored at the A. F. Mozhayskiy Military Academy in Leningrad – now St Petersburg – when the space camera manufacturers at the VNII-380 institute had stumbled upon it.
“Further investigation showed that the temperature-resistant and radiation-hardened film would be perfect for the AFA-Ye1 camera, and the rest was history,” said Siddiqi.
He then added that Luna 3 1963 photographed about 70% of the moon's far side and the findings that came from it prompted scientists to revise their theories of lunar evolution.
SOURCE: Siddiqi, Asif A. (2018). Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958–2016
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/beyond-earth-tagged.pdf
