Thursday, February 2, 2012

Take a Look at the Lunar Far Side!

Hey Space Placers!

NASA's GRAIL A & B Mission to the Moon, the twin spacecraft are now called Ebb and Flow, made history on Januray 19, 2012 by taking the first-ever video of the lunar far side. The 30 second video shows Ebb coming in over the lunar north pole and heading towards the south lunar pole.

The video is from the onboard MoonKAM and a similar video camera is on Flow. The video shows the Moon in fair detail and famous features such as Mare Orientale are visible. I watched it a couple of times and enjoyed the view we never get to see. The frame below shows the area of the south lunar pole.
South pole of the far side of the moon as seen from the GRAIL mission's Ebb spacecraft.

The MoonKAMs will be used by thousands of fourth to eight grade students to study the Moon by taking photos of selected areas they submit requests for. It will be interesting to see what their obtained photographs and resulting studies reveal.

Read More About It and see the cool video! http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-031

Sky Guy in VA

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