A pair of Nasa spacecraft crashed into a mountain near the moon's north pole, bringing a deliberate end to a mission that peered into the lunar interior.
Engineers at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California commanded the twin spacecraft, Ebb and Flow, to fire their engines and burn their remaining fuel. Ebb plunged first, followed by Flow.
Afterwards Nasa said it had dedicated the spot in honour of mission team member Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, who died earlier this year.
By design, the impact site was far away from the Apollo landings and other historical sites.
Ms Ride's sister, who was in the control room for the finale, said it might be time to dust off Ms Ride's first telescope to view the site.
"We can look at the moon with a new appreciation and a smile when we see it, knowing that a little corner is named after Sally," the Rev Bear Ride said.
Since the crashes occurred on the moon's dark side, they were not visible from Earth. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will pass over the mountain and attempt to photograph the skid marks left by the washing machine sized-spacecraft as they hit the surface at 3800mph.
After rocketing off the launch pad in September 2011, Ebb and Flow took a roundabout journey to the moon, arriving over the New Year's holiday. They focused on measuring the moon's gravity field in a bid to learn more about its interior and early history.
After flying in formation for months, they produced the most detailed gravity maps of any body in the solar system.
Scientists expect to sift through data and images from the mission for years.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article