Low-Flying Moon Probe Spies Craters And Mountains While Seeking Stars

LADEE post launch news briefing at NASA Wallops, VA with Air Force Col. Urban Gillespie, Minotaur mission director from the Space Development and Test Directorate, John Grunsfeld, Astronaut and NASA Associate Administrator for Science, Pete Worden, Director of NASA’s Ames Research Center. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
A series of images from NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) in Februrary 2014 showing the moon. Credit: NASA Ames
A series of images from NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) in Februrary 2014 showing the moon. Credit: NASA Ames

While NASA’s newest lunar probe was tracking the stars, it also captured the moon! This series of star tracker images shows Earth’s closest large neighbour from a close-up orbit. And as NASA explains, the primary purpose of these star-tracking images from the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) was not the lunar pictures themselves.

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