ShadowCam • Seeing in the Shadows

About the Project(current)
Featured Images(current)
Recent News(current)
Software(current)

©ShadowCam 2025 •
NASA • KARI • SESE

Featured Image

A Light Bulb Overhead

Colored to emphasize slope, with steeper slopes in red and yellow, and shallower slopes in blue, this digital terrain model (DTM) reveals the depths of a volcanic crater called Schrödinger G. The image merges an LROC Narrow Angle Camera ...

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Recent News

ShadowCam PDS Release - June 2025

Footprint plot of the ShadowCam images in the June 2025 release at the North pole [NASA/KARI/ASU/Intuitive Machines] The ShadowCam team released another three months of observations to PDS on 27 May 2025. This release includes ...

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Nadir view of PSR Erlanger crater

ShadowCam

Seeing in the Shadows

ShadowCam is based on the successful Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) and is approximately 200 times more sensitive than the current NAC, which will allow scientists to see into the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) surrounding the Moon's poles.

Lunar south pole illumination map

What are PSRs?

Permanently Shadowed Regions

Permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) may be the most valuable real estate in the Solar System, with the potential for cold-trapped volatiles, which could provide essential resources to enable future exploration of the Moon and beyond.

Illustrated view of ShadowCam seeing in the shadowed portion of a PSR

The Mission

NASA, ASU, and KARI

NASA selected ShadowCam as a contribution to the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s (KARI) first lunar exploration mission, Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO). ShadowCam will address three of four Strategic Knowledge Gaps and join four other KARI-developed instruments onboard KPLO.