Incredible new moon images show Artemis 3 landing sites near the lunar south pole (photos)

The lunar south pole looks haunting in a new mosaic image that uses photography from two different NASA cameras in orbit around the moon.

National Geographic, in coordination with NASA, shared a never-before-seen, high-resolution composite image of the lunar south pole with a detailed companion map of Artemis 3 candidate landing sites.

This striking image of the moon's south pole region was composed from a series of photos taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), a network of cameras mounted on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which has been circling the moon since June 2009, and ShadowCam, a NASA-funded instrument on the Korea Aerospace Research Institute's Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO). ShadowCam is 200 times more sensitive to light than previously deployed NASA lunar cameras, according to an agency statement.

It seems that all eyes are fixed upon our lone satellite these days, especially with India's historic Chandrayaan-3 lunar south pole mission in the news over the past few weeks.

Back on Aug. 23, 2023, India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon's south pole on a $77 million mission that allowed their space program to become only the fourth in history to accomplish a soft lunar landing after the United States, the former Soviet Union and China. Following a two-week mission exploring the vicinity and conducting experiments, the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover went into sleep mode as the sun set, to be hopefully reawakened on Sept. 22.

Russia's most recent attempt at reaching the moon's south pole, meanwhile, the Luna-25 mission, ended in failure when its lander crashed into the lunar surface.

Both China and the United States want to send human crews to the moon's south pole. China has a mission planned for no earlier than 2030, while NASA plans to land a crew of astronauts near the lunar south pole no earlier than 2025 in what is planned to be the first human mission on the moon in over 50 years.

For more on this inspiring story and additional Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images, check out National Geographic's special "Space" issue landing on Sept. 19, 2023.