Earthrise

The Japanese robotic lunar explorer Kaguya has been in a 100 km high lunar orbit for about a month, and its instrument set is operating. Amongst those instruments is an HD video camera, which captured the image at right.

For those of us old enough to remember, this is evocative of the iconic earthrise image from Apollo 8, the first manned mission to reach the vicinity of the moon.

The Japanese space program – tiny by comparison with NASA – has been beset by technical difficulties, political wrangling, and funding challenges. Nevertheless, they have accomplished a lot of good science, entirely with robotic missions, and Kaguya appears to be on track to do more of the same…