After waiting out a thunderstorm, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite rocketed off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 5:32 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on June 18, 2009. This photograph captures the pair of spacecraft as they were lifting off.
Forty years after the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of the descent stage of the Eagle lunar module.
Long before man journeyed to the moon and looked back at the tiny, fragile planet that houses humanity, lunar orbiters were sending back pictures of home.
When the Apollo 11 astronauts left the surface of the Moon on July 21, 1969, they brought home samples of solar wind particles, lunar rocks and dirt, and a big helping of perspective.