For the past two years, NASA’s Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO) has been orbit­ing the Moon, gath­er­ing data that will help astro­nauts pre­pare for long-dura­tion expe­di­tions to the lunar sur­face, and even­tu­al­ly push fur­ther into the “infi­nite fron­tier of space.” (Read more about the big pic­ture plan here.)

As part of this mis­sion, the LRO has trav­eled approx­i­mate­ly 50 kilo­me­ters (31 miles) above the Moon, cre­at­ing a 3‑D map of the lunar sur­face. And now we’re receiv­ing images that show us the Moon in unprece­dent­ed detail and focus. The val­leys. The craters. The des­o­late sur­face. They’re all there, as nev­er seen before, in HD.

This strik­ing clip oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD)

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

If you were stuck some­where far away from yes­ter­day’s lunar eclipse, here’s some con­so­la­tion cour­tesy of NASA. The Sci­en­tif­ic Visu­al­iza­tion Stu­dio at the God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter has com­piled this two and a half minute video from over a year’s worth of data record­ed by the Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO), which has been orbit­ing the moon at 50 kilo­me­ters above its sur­face for over a year.

The results are pret­ty spec­tac­u­lar, and might ren­der the pain of miss­ing a chance to watch the moon turn red a lit­tle more bear­able, espe­cial­ly for all you heart­bro­ken Can­cers (we’ll get through this.)

via Wired News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD)

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

If you haven’t been fol­low­ing the Cassi­ni space­craft’s sec­ond mis­sion to Sat­urn, here’s a video that will hook you in. It fea­tures incred­i­ble black-and-white images of Sat­urn and its moons, all cap­tured by Cassini’s “cam­era” — also known as the Cassi­ni-Huy­gens Imag­ing Sci­ence Sub­sys­tem — and designer/director Chris Abbas, who edit­ed togeth­er footage from Cassini’s archive and set it to a great Nine Inch Nails sound­track.

Accord­ing to NASA, the Cassi­ni will con­tin­ue orbit­ing Sat­urn until May 2017. It has already dis­cov­ered some amaz­ing things about Sat­urn’s largest moon, Titan, includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Titan’s cur­rent state, com­plete with its lakes, rivers, rain, snow, clouds, moun­tains and even vol­ca­noes, may tell us some­thing about what earth was like before life evolved. But Abbas’s short film would be beau­ti­ful to watch even with­out any knowl­edge of the sci­ence behind it.

via @kirstinbutler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA:  The Fron­tier is Every­where

NASA Cap­tures Giant Solar Storm

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

NASA Lauch­es Pho­to Archive on Flickr

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.