Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter News
The reason could be related to large collisions taking place more than 290 million years ago in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
The findings could help researchers understand the origin of the Moon's water and how easy it would be to use as a resource.
As LRO crossed the lunar south pole heading north at 3,579 mph (1,600 meters per second), the shadow of the Moon was racing across the United States at 1,500 mph (670 meters per second).
Scientists have identified that the bright areas in craters near the Moon's south pole are cold enough to have frost present on the surface.
From the sudden and jagged pattern apparent in the image, the LROC team determined that the camera must have been hit by a tiny meteoroid, NASA said in a statement on Friday.
In addition to Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, the US space agency also located NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) around the Moon.
The findings, published in Nature, come from "before and after" pictures taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, which has been mapping the Moon since 2009.
The high resolution Earthrise image was captured from the spacecraft's vantage point in orbit around the moon.
This rare event won't happen again until 2034.
New images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft revealed earth's gravity has influenced the orientation of thousands of faults that form in the lunar surface as the moon shrinks.
Earth's gravity has influenced the orientation of thousands of faults that form in the lunar surface as the Moon shrinks, NASA has revealed.
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