NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will relocate 30 kilometers closer to the moon for a week to take clearer images of the Apollo lunar landing sites, as reported on the project's Twitter account.
The relocation on August 14 will allow the LRO cameras to "obtain images of the Apollo sites that are about four times sharper" than the best pictures taken so far. The LRO will return to its permanent 50-km orbit on August 19.
The orbiter will not decelerate from its 1.6 km/s (3,500 mph) speed when it gets closer to the moon's surface, which might cause some image blurring, a Twitter post said.
Launched in June 2009, LRO and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) became the first missions launched as part of the United States' Vision for Space Exploration program.
