New Spacecraft Can See Into the Permanently Shadowed Craters on the Moon By Nancy_A
The ShadowCam instrument has been in an operational checkout period since the spacecraft entered lunar orbit. During the checkout, it has been collecting dozens of images of the lunar polar regions, including an image of Shackleton Crater, to calibrate and test its functionality.
Images of the permanently shadowed wall and floor of Shackleton Crater captured by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera and ShadowCam . Each panel shows an area that is 5,906 feet wide and 7,218 feet tall. Image Credit: NASA/KARI/ASU. Above, you can see a comparison of an image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and ShadowCam of the same region inside Shackleton. The image from the new camera shows considerably more detail inside the crater. Keep in mind, this is just a calibration image.
ShadowCam was developed by investigators at Arizona State University and Malin Space Science Systems and is NASA’s contribution to the Danuri mission. The camera is based on the incredibly productive cameras on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter – in lunar orbit since 2009 — but the ShadowCam is 200 times more light-sensitive, allowing it to obtain high-resolution, high signal-to-noise imaging of these PSRs.
While cameras like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera were designed to acquire images of sunlit surfaces, ShadowCam’s hypersensitive optics should be able to capture detailed images within permanently shadowed regions – even in the absence of direct light – by using the dim secondary light that is reflected off nearby geologic features such as mountains or the walls of craters.