Far Side of the Moon Video of the Day: NASA’s Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission has beamed back its first video of the far side of the moon, the lunar region that always faces away from Earth.
The footage includes the 560-mile wide Mare Orientale impact basin, which straddles both the near and far side of the moon, and the 93-mile-wide star-shaped Drygalski crater. Both landmarks were created by asteroid impacts after the moon’s formation.
GRAIL’s twin satellites, Ebb and Flow, were launched in September 2011. They’ll continue taking footage of the far side of the moon for MoonKAM, a NASA program that allows middle school students to picks areas of the moon for study, and have more detailed photos of the areas sent to them.
[wired]
