The Orientale basin is the youngest of the large lunar basins. The distinct outer ring is about 950 kilometers (590 miles) from east-to-west, the full width of the LROC WAC mosaic is 1350 (839 miles) kilometers.

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, 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.