This just in: these are the FIRST photos ever taken from the far side of the Moon.

It's a good day for space exploration fans.

We've received the first detailed pictures of the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft and, on the same day, a probe successfully landed on the far side of the Moon - for the first time in history.

Yes, for the first time. We're having the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing this year, but we never successfully landed (as opposed to "crashed") anything - not a manned spacecraft, not even a probe - on the far side. Until now.

Our Moon, like all of the really big moons in our Solar System, has the habit of showing us always the same side. Depending on the phase, a bigger or a smaller part of it may by illuminated, but it's always the same side. If you want to see the other one, you need to send a rocket.

That's what the Soviets did in 1959, photographing the far side from orbit. Over the years, better and better quality images were obtained - always from orbit. So we had images of the far side, but no photos were taken from the surface of the far side.

But today, a Chinese lander named Chang'e 4 soft-landed on the far side of the Moon. It's already taking pictures of this world we've never seen up close. You can see individual small rocks - and a bigger crater - around the place where the lander touched down.

And there's a wheeled rover to be deployed by the lander to the lunar surface, so... the fun has only begun.