NASA's latest moon probe has sent back pictures of the moon and stars for the first time ever this week.
The orbiting probe successfully downlinked pictures of the moon and stars photographed by a camera systems known as star trackers, according to Space.com.
The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is able to take images of the nearby star field so that the probe can internally figure out its location in space, according to NASA.
Earlier on this month, the trackers captured some "dramatic views" of lunar terrain as well.
"Star tracker cameras are actually not very good at taking ordinary images," said Butler Hine, LADEE project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif, according to Space.com. "But they can sometimes provide exciting glimpses of the lunar terrain."
Five images sent back to Earth were taken at one-minute intervals on Feb. 8, all of which captured different sections of the northern western hemisphere of the moon.
The second image sent back shows a crater called Wallaston P, and part of the moon mountain Mons Herodotus, according to NASA. LADEE captured the lunar mountain range, Montes Agricola, in its third picture.
"Image four in the series captures Golgi, about 4 miles in diameter, and 3-mile-wide Zinner," NASA officials said, according to Space.com. "The final image views craters Lichtenberg A and Schiaparelli E in the smooth mare basalt plains of Western Oceanus Procellarum, west of the Aristarchus plateau."
A star tracker works by using lenses with a wide-angle field of view in order to capture the sky in one frame.
LADEE launched into space last September to observe the moon's thin atmosphere and lunar dust, according to Space.com.
The probe will crash into the moon's surface, ending its mission, on April 21 of this year.
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