The LRO lunar orbiter team has published the first fulll-coverage high resolution map of the far side of the Moon

"The LROC map products being released over the next week will not only serve the lunar science community for years to come, but also provide a roadmap for human exploration of our nearest neighbor," says Robinson, a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Among today’s highlighted images is the most detailed view yet of the farside of the Moon.

It was not until 1959 that the farside was first imaged by the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft. And what a surprise – the farside was a different world, geologically. Unlike the widespread maria on the nearside, basaltic volcanism was restricted to a relatively few, smaller regions on the farside, and the battered highlands crust dominated.

Mosaics from the Clementine images did not observe the farside at illumination angles favorable for seeing surface topography. This mosaic constructed of LROC Wide Angle Camera images, provides the most complete look at the morphology of the farside to date, and will serve as a valuable resource for the scientific community.

LROC acquires high-resolution images of the lunar surface from a 50kmr orbit of any spot on the surface with resolutions down to 50 centimeters/pixel while LRO orbits at a speed of 5,800 km/hr). The imaging system consists of two Narrow Angle Cameras (NACs) to provide high-resolution images, and a Wide Angle Camera (WAC) to provide 100m resolution images in seven color bands over a 57-km swath.

The global mosaic released today is comprised of over 15,000 WAC images acquired between November 2009 and February 2011.

See high resolution map at Arizona State University