The highly anticipated first images from NASA’s LADEE probe have arrived and their quality confirms what NASA scientists already suspected; the moon looks better in the images from the Chinese mission two months ago. In the words of Butler Hine, LADEE project manager; “Star tracker cameras are actually not very good at taking ordinary images.”
On the other hand, images from the Jade Rabbit, China’s first rover, show a much more photogenic lunar surface. Light grey rocks pop on the brownish ground, and the red-tinted volcanic plain of Sinus Iridum (the Bay of Rainbows) seems to glow. The moon that China roved looks far more exciting than the one NASA has been photographing for half a century. Beijing Aerospace Control released images of the Chang’e-3 mission in December, though the Jade Rabbit rover has yet to finish its job and the lander will continue to operate for the remainder of the year.
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