NASA Reveals Stunning Photo of Never-Before-Illuminated Moon Crater: Shackleton Crater

KOMPAS.com – The United States Space Agency (NASA) released a photo of a crater on the Moon taken using a combination of two different cameras.

Quoted from Science Alert, Wednesday (20/9/2023), this lunar crater is special because it has never been illuminated by the sun for billions of years.

The crater, known as the Shackleton Crater, is located in the mountainous part of the Moon’s south pole.

With this slope, only the back and highest peaks are illuminated by sunlight.

While the rest of the region is largely in shadow, creating a ‘cold trap’ where water or ice could potentially hide and go unnoticed by anyone.

Meanwhile, the dark center of Shackleton Crater has a very cold temperature of -173 degrees Celsius.

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If the area contains water vapor from ancient comet impacts, then the region inside the Moon’s crater is now frozen.

The Moon mission investigates Shackleton Crater

The Craters of the Moon are an unexplored world, so experts are eager to know more about them, especially because they seem to be suitable places for water to exist in the form of ice.

Chinese astronomers plan to send a mini probe to Shackleton Crater in 2026, to drill and look for evidence of water ice on the Moon.

Meanwhile, NASA relies on its technology to peer into the darkness of the Moon’s south pole.

This specially designed device is known as ShadowCam and was launched to a Korean satellite orbiting the Moon in August 2022.

Shackleton Crater is the first image that has been obtained and shared. This provides information about views of the Moon that have never been seen before.

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ShadowCam is 200 times more sensitive to light in dark areas than other lunar cameras.

The device can also depict dark surfaces by relying on ‘earthshine’, which is the reflection of light from our planet that illuminates the Moon.

The camera also uses reflected sunlight from mountains and ridges on the Moon itself.

However, the downside is that ShadowCam produces excessive saturation when photographing bright areas.

Earlier this year, for example, scientists at NASA tried using ShadowCam to photograph Shackleton Crater, which has just three spots that receive sunlight about 90 percent of the year.

The part exposed to sunlight eventually becomes pale.

However, technology continues to be improved, namely by combining other lunar cameras in orbit. This allows the entire view of the Moon’s craters to be captured in amazing detail.

“With each camera optimized for the specific lighting conditions found near the lunar poles, analysts can combine images from both instruments to create a comprehensive visual map of the terrain and geological features of the brightest and darkest parts of the Moon,” NASA said in a statement .

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2023-09-21 13:00:00
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