A Brief Trip Over the Dark Side of the Moon

We spend a lot of time probing very far away parts of space, but NASA’s GRAIL mission is only interested in the Moon. Two spacecraft, Ebb and Flow, are orbiting said piece of cheese at very low 50 mile orbits, taking finely detailed gravitational measurements in the interest of learning more about what’s going on in the sphere’s guts. And in the interest of taking cool video, like this one taken on Jan. 19 by Ebb’s MoonKAM of the Moon’s far side.

Says NASA:

In the video, the north pole of the moon is visible at the top of the screen as the spacecraft flies toward the lunar south pole. One of the first prominent geological features seen on the lower third of the moon is the Mare Orientale, a 560 mile-wide (900 kilometer) impact basin that straddles both the moon’s near and far side. The clip ends with rugged terrain just short of the lunar south pole. To the left of center, near the bottom of the screen, is the 93 mile-wide (149 kilometer) Drygalski crater with a distinctive star-shaped formation in the middle. The formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact.

The GRAIL mission only lasts 90 days— barring any extensions — after which NASA will ditch both spacecraft on the Moon’s surface.

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Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.