





One of NASA's twin GRAIL spacecrafts has captured a video of the Moon's far side for the first time.

Earth's tidal forces have slowed down the Moon's rotation so that it always presents one side to us. The other side, although receiving as much light as the front side, is called the far (or, more poetically, dark) side of the Moon, notably giving the name to one of Pink Floyd's most successful albums.

The far side of Earth's only natural satellite has been photographed before (by Apollo 16, for example), but there has been no ground exploration there and no video was ever taken.

The GRAIL (Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory) project consists of two identical spacecraft orbiting the moon - Ebb and Flow - each carrying a special camera called MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students.) Thousands of fourth to eighth graders selected areas on the lunar surface to be photographed by the MoonKAM, and the imagery will be sent back to them to study.

"The quality of the video is excellent and should energize our MoonKAM students as they prepare to explore the moon," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

In the 30-second video, you can see the Moon's heavily cratered, rough surface; notable sights include the Moon's north pole, the 560-mile-wide Mare Orientale impact basin and, near the bottom of the screen, the 93-mile-wide Drygalski crater.







Image credit: NASA

[via NASA]