The Dark Side Of The Moon

My name is Joseph, I was the head of the five-man investigation team that was sent to the far side of the Moon to investigate and find out what caused the formation of the largest crater in our solar system called the 'South Pole-Aitken basin'.

You see, NASA has always had the capability to go to the moon, the general public never knew about this, all those new satellites that the government used to launch? Those were space shuttles to go into space to explore different planets like Mars. We have expanded in space so much, but this one mystery remains to be solved, and we were spearheading this new operation as the first ones to be going there. I felt excited, but a chill of uncertainty also flowed through my body.

My team consisted of four more members, Aslam and Emily, my junior research assistants, Jane was the pilot and senior technician and last but not least Eric was the team medic, for emergencies, because a lot of things can go wrong in space really quick. We were a determined band of fellows, aching to begin our massive and inordinate voyage, we were at the doorstep of making history, for all the wrong reasons it would turn out.

We set out on our rite of passage on 27th of January 2019, we had made massive preparations, we had discussed and predicted what we could find on the crater and I was sure that everyone on board was excited and anticipating our arrival on the Moon. After a journey of 37 hours, we entered into the gravitational field of the Moon.

It was magnificent, to see the giant glowing ball of the night sky so up close, I never imagined to set foot on the Moon in my lifetime, but here I was, only hours away from setting my foot on the Moon. I was ecstatic and screaming with joy like a child who gets their favourite toy for the first time, but I remained cool on the outside so my fellow companions couldn't make fun of my immature persona. But we weren't here for the bright, silvery side of the Moon, we were here for the ancient dark side of the Moon.

It was black as the night, we couldn't see anything of the surface of the Moon, It was as if nothing existed on this side, only darkness. We landed on the surface and switched on the lights on the outside of the spacecraft, and I do not exaggerate this, but we couldn't see five feet around us, this was ominous but we expected this, there was no sunlight and no other reflective light source. We were ordered to go out 16 hours after our landing, so in this time we had, we prepared our gear, our spacesuits, and sat down to check our already done research and calculations.

After getting everything ready, we all decided to rest up one last time before starting. Our spacecraft was quite large, it had everything, separate rooms and even an observatory at the top, with a glass dome to see out of, naturally I didn't sleep in my room, but I slept in the observatory to sleep while star gazing.

As I rested my head down on the makeshift bed I had made in the observatory, I looked up at the stars, the fathomless starry sky, the millions and millions of galaxies, the almost infinite solar systems around these stars. I strongly believed that we weren't the only living beings in this prodigious Universe, there was no way. Have you ever seen the night sky without light pollution? The stars litter the sky like grains of sand on a beach, encapsulated by light years of darkness. There was life out there, I was sure of it. I slowly fell asleep trying make out figures with the stars.

I woke up to Aslam calling out my name from below, I answered and came down groggily. Eric had made all of us breakfast and Jane was busy checking our spacesuits for the final time.

"Today's the big day, huh?", said Aslam.

"Yeah, I spent my entire life waiting for this moment, to step onto the Moon, honestly I don't know how I'll feel about all of this when I'm back home on my couch", I said in a calm manner.