NASA probe captures 1st video of moon’s far side

February 3, 2012 | Source: Space.com
NASA Moon

One of NASA's twin Grail spacecraft has returned its first unique picture of the far side of the moon, an image that shows shadowed craters at the moon's south pole. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A gravity-mapping spacecraft orbiting the moon has beamed home its first video of the lunar far side, a view people on Earth never see.

The new video was captured by one of NASA’s twin Grail probes using a novel camera called MoonKAM, which will eventually be used by students on Earth to snap photos of the lunar surface as part of an educational project. The two spacecraft have been circling the moon since they arrived in orbit over the New Year.

Because the moon is tidally locked with Earth, it only presents one face to the planet’s surface (the near side). The side of the moon that faces away from Earth is the far side. Only robotic spacecraft and Apollo astronauts who orbited the moon in the 1960s and 1970s have seen the far side of the moon directly.