Surprise! NASA has shared a brand-new photo of the Moon taken by Artemis II—capturing both the Moon’s front and back sides:

On the right is the Moon’s front side—the side we see from Earth. Its most obvious feature is that the surface is covered with dark patches. These are actually remnants of ancient lava flows left behind from volcanic activity during the Moon’s early history.
On the left is the Moon’s back side—large impact craters located west of these lava plains, Oceanus Procellarum. This is a gigantic impact basin with a diameter of nearly 600 miles, spanning both the Moon’s front and back sides. The half of Oceanus Procellarum on the left cannot be seen from Earth, but in this photo, we can see the entire impact basin in full.
From the area further to the left of this impact basin, everything belongs entirely to the Moon’s back side—that is, the hemisphere we cannot see from Earth. The reason we can’t see it is because the Moon’s rotation speed matches exactly the speed of its orbit around Earth.
The Artemis II crew members are the first humans to see the Moon’s far side with their own eyes!