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The central peak of Tsiolkovskiy crater is surrounded with mare basalt. This NAC frame shows where boulders rolled down the central peak and onto the mare basalt (note the boulder trails). The central peaks of larger lunar craters like Tsiolkovskiy are of particular scientific interest, because they expose rocks uplifted from great depth during the impact process. This image is 890 meters, or 2919 feet, wide with an incidence angle of 88°.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center built and manages the mission for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera was designed to acquire data for landing site certification and to conduct polar illumination studies and global mapping. Operated by Arizona State University, LROC consists of a pair of narrow-angle cameras (NAC) and a single wide-angle camera (WAC). The mission is expected to return over 70 terabytes of image data.