The space agency's highly sensitive camera has imaged the lunar south pole as scientists attempt to learn as much as possible about the region before humans set foot on it.
ShadowCam gazed into the steeply-walled 13-mile wide and 2.6-mile deep crater to see the track created when a boulder rolled down its slope. Observations like this can help characterize rocks in the region and the shapes and velocities of the boulders that create the tracks. Even with the impressive imaging capability of ShadowCam this instrument still needs assistance to examine some of the deeply shadowed craters of the moon.
The central peak of the Aristarchus crater was also captured by ShadowCam using Earthshine as a secondary light source. There is another type of secondary lighting that ShadowCam can exploit to image the regions of the moon bereft of direct sunlight. This relies on light the sun reflected off the moon's own geological features like mountains and crater walls at the poles that rise high above the lunar surface.
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