After almost 50 years, the American space agency NASA will send humans back to the moon through the Artemis 3 mission.
The mission will land on the South Pole of the Moon and the first image of its possible locations has been shared by NASA.
NASA has released an image of Shackleton Crater at the South Pole of the Moon.
A collaboration between National Geographic and NASA has released a high-resolution image of this location of the Moon’s south pole.
This image is mainly created by combining multiple images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) and the Shadow Cam.
A statement accompanying the image said that this part of the moon is always dark and Shadowcam captured the image of the Shackleton crater near the South Pole.
According to the statement, ShadowCam was designed to examine the dark parts of the Moon’s surface and the camera has been in lunar orbit for about a year with a South Korean spacecraft.
Images of the area around Shackleton crater were taken by LROC and in this image 3 of the 13 proposed landing sites for Artemis 3 can be seen.
Along with this image, National Geographic has also released a map of the Moon’s south pole showing the proposed landing sites for Artemis 3.
It should be noted that along with the US, China is also willing to send humans to the South Pole of the Moon.
But China’s proposed mission would not be able to take off before 2030, while NASA’s mission is scheduled for 2025, but that would depend on SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft being cleared for flight.