China's Mission to the Darkside of the Moon

The moon rotates, on its axis, or around the earth? why do we only ever see the one face of the moon?

China's lunar orbital images:

moon.bao.ac.cn...

and

moon.bao.ac.cn...

originally posted by: pikestaff
The moon rotates, on its axis, or around the earth? why do we only ever see the one face of the moon?

It rotates once on its axis per revolution around Earth.

That's due to it being tidally locked to Earth. Tidal locking is not uncommon, as we know of at least 30 other moons in the solar system that are tidally locked.

Pluto and its major moon Charon are tidally locked in an interesting manner -- they are tidally locked to each other. That means that as Pluto and Charon orbit around a common point between them, Pluto always only shows one face to Charon, and Charon always only shows one face to Pluto. They, too, rotate once on their axis per each revolution/orbit around each other.

a reply to: lostbook
If they find anything they will not tell us.
How much mula do you think the US had to pay China not to divulge accurate, truthful, pictures of the Mars Face?

a reply to: spiritualarchitect

Given that China hasn't had anything with a camera anywhere near Mars, and that there isn't actually a face...