If you lived on the moon, you’d have to give up lots of things you take for granted on Earth. The feeling of your feet planted firmly on the ground. Your ability to breathe outside without a helmet. And your night-sky view.
Humans have spent millennia staring up at the moon, watching it rise and set, charting its phases as it grows and shrinks each month. But from the viewpoint of the moon, how would the Earth look hanging in the sky?
Well, first, that depends on where you’re standing.
The moon is tidally locked with Earth, meaning the moon’s orbital period matches its rotational period. It takes about a month for both the moon to orbit Earth and for the moon to rotate on its axis. Effectively, this means that the same side of the moon always facing our planet. That’s why when you peer through a telescope, the craters and other features on the surface of the moon are always in the same place.
The first humans who directly saw the far side of the moon, that is, the side that’s always facing away from Earth, were the Apollo 8 astronauts.