Upside down, rotating backwards: How Earth looks like from Moon's South Pole | Watch
The visualisation shows an unusual movement of Earth and Sun as viewed from the South Pole of the Moon.
As Nasa prepares to launch the Artemis Mission to the Moon, engineers have visualised how Earth will look from its polar caps. The lunar polar caps are speculated to have a wide variety of rare-Earth metals that could be harnessed in the future to move from the Moon to Mars and beyond.
With the Artemis mission, Nasa aims to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon.
The visualisation shows an unusual movement of the Earth and Sun as viewed from the South Pole of the Moon. The scientific visualisation studio of Nasa has compressed three months of footage into two minutes recorded through a camera placed on the rim of Shackleton Crater aimed at Earth.
Nasa said from the South Pole, it appeared that the Sun glides around the horizon, never more than 1.5 degrees above or below it, while the Earth bobs up and down, never veering far from zero-degree longitude.
"The Earth appears to be upside-down and rotating backwards. The perpetually low Sun angle produces extremely long shadows that rotate across the rugged lunar terrain," Nasa said.
The visualisation rendered by Ernie Wright shows the Earth passing in front of the Sun, creating an eclipse in the second month. The phenomenon is known to humans as a lunar eclipse. When viewed from the Moon, it is an eclipse of the Sun.
Researchers have identified the lunar South Pole as a prime location that could harbour these materials and resources while hiding some of the biggest secrets of Earth's natural satellite, including answers to how it was formed in the first place and how other worlds in the solar system evolved. The answer can be in the pieces of the Moon's interior scattered on the surface.
Ahead of humans, Nasa has planned to launch rovers to the lunar South Pole led by its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) near the edge of the Nobile Crater in 2023. The rover will explore the region’s surface and subsurface for water and other resources. The rover will hitch a ride on the SpaceX Falcon-Heavy rocket to the lunar pole.
The Moon’s South Pole is one of the coldest areas in our solar system and scientists have so far only studied the region using remote sensing instruments, including those on Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.
Scientists aim to study the origin and distribution of water on the Moon and prepare to harvest the resources 2,40,000 miles from the Earth that can be used to safely send astronauts farther into outer space.