Moon Map by NASA is the Best Moon Map Ever (Photo Here)
This color-shaded relief view of the moon's far side, taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, is part of the highest-resolution near-global lunar topographic map ever created.
NASA Scientists has just released the highest highest-resolution topographic map of the moon ever formed.
Using a single Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft which carries a hand sized camera captured hundreds of thousands of pictures of the moon. The shots were spliced together to show the elevation of the moon's surface.
Robert Bigelow, Clark Planetarium Educator, said "They can study the moon in kind of a 3D way. So they can study features on the moon and learn how they formed."
The new lunar map covers 98.2 percent of the moon and depicts the natural satellite's surface and features at a pixel scale of about 330 feet (100 meters). A global view of Earth's nearest neighbor at such high resolution had never existed before, scientists said.
NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009 on a $504 million mission to map the moon in unprecedented detail. The spacecraft is about the size of a Mini Cooper car and carries seven instruments to study the lunar surface.
In addition to its mapping role, the spacecraft has also spotted several historic artifacts of moon exploration, including NASA's Apollo landers and the boot prints left behind by moon-walking astronauts during the six manned lunar landings between 1969 and 1972.
The new moon map from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter doesn’t cover 100 percent of the moon because persistent shadows prevent the camera from snapping good photos near the north and south poles. However, another instrument aboard LRO, the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, can map out polar terrain, so the "holes at the poles" may soon be filled in.
Using a single Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft which carries a hand sized camera captured hundreds of thousands of pictures of the moon. The shots were spliced together to show the elevation of the moon's surface.
Robert Bigelow, Clark Planetarium Educator, said "They can study the moon in kind of a 3D way. So they can study features on the moon and learn how they formed."
The new lunar map covers 98.2 percent of the moon and depicts the natural satellite's surface and features at a pixel scale of about 330 feet (100 meters). A global view of Earth's nearest neighbor at such high resolution had never existed before, scientists said.
NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009 on a $504 million mission to map the moon in unprecedented detail. The spacecraft is about the size of a Mini Cooper car and carries seven instruments to study the lunar surface.
In addition to its mapping role, the spacecraft has also spotted several historic artifacts of moon exploration, including NASA's Apollo landers and the boot prints left behind by moon-walking astronauts during the six manned lunar landings between 1969 and 1972.
The new moon map from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter doesn’t cover 100 percent of the moon because persistent shadows prevent the camera from snapping good photos near the north and south poles. However, another instrument aboard LRO, the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, can map out polar terrain, so the "holes at the poles" may soon be filled in.
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