PIA12928: Central Peak of Rutherfurd
 Target Name:  Moon
 Is a satellite of:  Earth
 Mission:  Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)
 Spacecraft:  Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)
 Instrument:  Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (NAC)
 Product Size:  1000 x 1000 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Arizona State University
 Other  
Information: 
More details and images at LROC
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA12928.tif (1.001 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA12928.jpg (164.4 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This image from the LROC NAC shows a view of boulders, on the floor of Rutherfurd crater, about to disappear into the shadows of dusk. Image width is 510 meters.

The rubbly boulders shown above may be the remnants of impact melt that temporarily washed over a high mound on the crater floor. As the melt hardened it formed a thin, brittle shell that was later broken by quakes or small impacts.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center built and manages the mission for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera was designed to acquire data for landing site certification and to conduct polar illumination studies and global mapping. Operated by Arizona State University, the LROC facility is part of the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE). LROC consists of a pair of narrow-angle cameras (NAC) and a single wide-angle camera (WAC). The mission is expected to return over 70 terabytes of image data.

Image Credit:
NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

Image Addition Date:
2009-11-20