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Watch this stunning lunar flyby taken shortly before GRAIL's planned impact

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On December 17 of last year, the NASA GRAIL mission came to a close when the Ebb spacecraft that had been orbiting the moon crashed into a mountain near its north pole. Three days prior to this planned impact, two cameras aboard the spacecraft took a series of images — now, NASA has stitched together the photos to create this dramatic video showing Ebb's perspective as it flew over the lunar surface.

The first part of the video consists of 931 individual frames, and was taken by the forward facing camera. The second part, taken by the rear-facing camera, is comprised of 1,498 individual frames. The entire thing is played back at six times the rate of Ebb's true orbital speed. The video was taken about six miles (10 km) above the northern hemisphere of the moon's far side, near the Jackson impact crater.


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