NASA Moon Probe Beams Lunar Photos to Earth

NASA's newest moon probe has beamed its view of the lunar surface back to Earth for the first time.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer spacecraft (called LADEE for short) beamed the new moon photos — which NASA released Feb. 13 — to ground controllers on Earth earlier this month. The new images show stars and a pockmarked lunar landscape.

LADEE's star tracker cameras took the wide-angle photos. The small spacecraft uses these cameras to figure out its orientation in orbit, a very important job. The accuracy of the probe's moon dust researching instruments relies upon knowing where it is located in space, NASA officials said Read more...