As NASA celebrates the 40th anniversary of the history-making Apollo 11 Moon landing, a brand new lunar orbiter has taken pictures of the famous landing module.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) took pictures of five of the six Apollo sites and plans to photograph the final site in the coming weeks. The images were transmitted back to Earth and are available to the public on NASA's website.

"The LROC team anxiously awaited each image," said LROC principal investigator Mark Robinson. "We were very interested in getting our first peek at the lunar module descent stages just for the thrill - and to see how well the cameras had come into focus. Indeed, the images are fantastic and so is the focus."

"Not only do these images reveal the great accomplishments of Apollo, they also show us that lunar exploration continues," said LRO project scientist Richard Vondrak added. "They demonstrate how LRO will be used to identify the best destinations for the next journeys to the Moon."

According to NASA, the image of the Apollo 14 landing site had a particularly desirable lighting condition that allowed visibility of additional details such as the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package, a set of scientific instruments placed by the astronauts at the landing site.