Today the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) released an image from the first high-definition television camera launched into space. The camera, built by NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), is aboard the Moon-bound Kaguya spacecraft, which was launched two weeks ago, and is scheduled to enter lunar orbit on October 4th. The image of Earth was captured on September 29th (Japan time) as part of movie, but the full video has not been released.

I can only hope that even as the spacecraft starts orbiting the Moon, that mission controllers will point the camera back at Earth a few more times. Despite decades of space exploration, there aren't any full-Earth images to serve as computer-desktop wallpaper. And just think of the video that will undoubtedly appear on HD channels in the near future.

To download the full-size version of the image (1,920 by 1,080 pixels; 700 KB), see the JAXA press release.