Charlie Byrne worked as a systems engineer at Bellcomm, for support of the Lunar Orbiter project. He is currently carrying out research about the Moon, and was the discoverer of the gigantic "near side megabasin" that covers nearly all of the near side of the Moon and whose ejecta has established the shape of the far side of the Moon.

The Far Side of the Moon.- The Spacecraft Missions and Images.- The History of the Moon and its Features.- Regions of the Far Side.- Nomenclature and Conventions of this Book.- The Western Far Side Region: Earth-rise, Tsiolkovskiy, Gagarin, and the Mendeleev Basin.- The Korolev Basin Region.- The South Pole-Aitken Basin and the South Polar Region.- The Northwestern Far Side Region: The Moscoviense Basin.- The Eastern Far Side Region: Birkhoff to Hertzsprung.- The North Polar Far Side Region.- The Orientale Limb Region.- The Near Side Megabasin.

The nature of the far side of the Moon has always been a mystery. Throughout human history, the far side of the Moon has been so near, its presence so obvious, and yet so hidden. It was only in the decade of the 1960s that we have been able to observe it, as opposed to inferring its existence. I have been fortunate to live during the period when the far side became visible and has been extensively examined by means that were not even known 50 years ago. During this time, we have learned much but of course we have asked new questions about secrets still hidden on the Moon. Some of these secrets will be revealed in the course of future exploration and robotic spacecraft missions. This book is about what we now know of the far side of the Moon, about what the current questions are, and about some possible answers. It is a companion book to The Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Near Side of the Moon, my first book (Byrne, 2005), also published by Springer in 2005. Together, these books cover the entire Moon in photographs taken by the robotic spacecraft that have done much of their work behind the Moon, out of communi- tion with Earth for half of their orbital periods. The photographs of the near side book were taken by a single mission of the Lunar Orbiter project, Lunar Orbiter 4 that was flown in 1967.