This mosaic covers about 700 km by 220 km and was taken by the Advanced Moon Imaging Experiment on SMART-1. It shows a trio of craters very near to the Moon’s north pole, on the edge of the Luna Incognita. From right to left, these craters are named Plaskett, Rozhdestvenskiy and Hermite.
SMART-1 was an ESA mission and the first European spacecraft to travel to and orbit around the Moon, launched on 27 September 2003. The mission ended on 3 September 2006 by a controlled lunar impact.
This image is part of a set of more than 100 that have just been re-released under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO licence as part of ESA’s Open Access initiative. Read more at
open.esa.int/the-moon-by-smart-1/
Credit: ESA/SMART-1/AMIE camera team/Space Exploration Institute,
CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO 