Overview
- NASA released Artemis II crew photos that mark the first human-view of the Orientale Basin during the program’s first crewed lunar voyage in more than five decades.
- The images show the entire multi-ring structure on the Moon’s far western limb, a view robots had mapped but people had not seen in full.
- Scientists say the new perspective could sharpen models of how giant impacts shape worlds and help pick candidate Artemis landing sites.
- Orientale spans about 950 kilometers near the Moon’s edge, where the full basin is hard to see from Earth because it sits near the border of the near and far sides.
- Research points to a Late Heavy Bombardment origin about 3.8 billion years ago after an estimated 64-kilometer-wide asteroid struck and blasted roughly 3.4 million cubic kilometers of lunar rock into space.