Far Side of Moon Imaged by MoonKAM

• Click the image above for a larger view
• Full-Res JPEG (485 x 714) (59.8 kB)
• Full-Res TIFF (485 x 714) (1.0 MB)

Caption:

This image of the lunar surface was taken by NASA's MoonKAM system onboard the Ebb spacecraft on March 15, 2012. The 42.3-mile-wide (68-kilometer-wide) crater in the middle of the image (with the smaller crater inside) is Poinsot. Crater Poinsot, named for the French mathematician Louis Poinsot, is located on the northern part of the moon's far side.

Background Info:

MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students), is led by Sally Ride, America's first woman in space, and her team at Sally Ride Science, in collaboration with undergraduate students at the University of California in San Diego. Over 2,700 schools in 52 countries have signed up to participate in MoonKAM.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, is home to the mission's principal investigator, Maria Zuber. The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about GRAIL visit http://www.nasa.gov/grail or http://grail.nasa.gov .

Cataloging Keywords: