The spacecraft's final moments, with the lunar surface drawing ever nearer
Posted 06.19.2009 at 4:00 pm
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Kaguya's Farewell Transmission (3) Before crashing to the surface last week, Japan's Kaguya probe sent back a series of seven high-resolution images just a few thousand feet above the lunar surface.
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JAXA/NHK
The Japan Space Agency's Kaguya lunar explorer, after a mission that included new geological surveys and lots of gloriously detailed HD footage of the moon's surface, crash landed into a large crater on the moon's near side this week. And JAXA today released its final images, depicting the final moments of its descent. Updated with video.
These are stills taken with the craft's HD video camera; most likely, a video feed was impossible due to transmission times, which is unfortunate. Seeing a high-def crash landing on the moon would have been quite a sight.
Update: Shows how much I know--JAXA has released an amazing video of the descent:
Click here to see the final seven images, and a map showing Kaguya's final resting place.
[JAXA]
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from coral gables, fl
Was it supposed to crash land on the moon for these pictures? Or did the thing just crash so they figured lets take as many photos as we can?
Anyway, pretty cool images
They planned to crash it there all along.
Does anyone else wonder why we can't get a clear picture of the moon? This is a fantastic high def picture? You can't see anything!
We can't see a color picture less than 10 thousand feet. What is it they don't want us to see.
You can't tell me they spent millions to send this probe up and did not have the best of cameras on it.
This doesn't fly. We want to see the real pictures. We are not buying the whole black and white crap. All those craters and everything is grey. No color minerals anywhere? No colors at all?
from Las Vegas, Nevada
they can't just put any camera on there.
though they could do with some better ones.
These are indeed great HD and interesting Images of the moon.It doesn't matter if the pictures are black or white or color they are great.
dordor77@netvision.net.il
I'm sorry, Voices1776, but have you ever seen any picture of the moon that was anything else then B&W? You know you can actually look at the moon with a telescope or binoculars? Try that and then let us know how many colours did you find. Besides grey, that is.