NASA’s Lunar Orbiter Can Show Us the Moon in the Future

An orbiter that's been hanging out around the Earth's moon for the last five years is making it easier to gaze at the future face of our moon.

NASA's Lunar Reconn​aissance Orbiter started orbiting the moon in the summer of 2009. Since then, it's collected some of the most detailed​ images of the lunar surface we have, making it easier to predict the moon's phases with expert precision.

Predicting how the moon will look might seem like an easy task, since the same side of the moon always faces earth, but there are actually fluctuations in what we see. The tilt and shape of the moon's orbit is such that we see the moon from subtly different angles as the each day goes by. These different angles become apparent when a year's worth of the moon's phases are compressed into a single video:

NASA has also used the LRO data to create an interactive m​oon crystal ball, allowing you to see precisely what the moon will look like in the Northern or Southern hemisphere on any day in 2015, with detailed specifications like the position angle and the distance from Earth. Go ahead, gaze into our future night sky or check out last year's predi​ctions to see how well they line up with tonight's moon.