The Central Intelligence Agency kept a 1961 translation of the “Atlas of the Far Side of the Moon,” originally published by the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, marked as “For Official Use Only” in its archives for just shy of 50 years.
Included in the document are the first photos of the far, or “dark” side of the moon, taken in 1959 by the Luna 3 spacecraft …
which were also available on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration website as early as 2000 …
a full decade before the CIA’s copy was released.
The full atlas is embedded below:
Image by Gregory H. Revera via Wikimedia Commons and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
