[meteorite-list] NASA Releases First Interactive Mosaic of Lunar North Pole

[Ron Baalke]

March 18, 2014
     
NASA Releases First Interactive Mosaic of Lunar North Pole

Scientists, using cameras aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO),  
have created the largest high resolution mosaic of our moon's north polar  
region. The six-and-a-half feet (two-meters)-per-pixel images cover an area  
equal to more than one-quarter of the United States.

Web viewers can zoom in and out, and pan around an area. Constructed from  
10,581 pictures, the mosaic provides enough detail to see textures and subtle  
shading of the lunar terrain. Consistent lighting throughout the images makes  
it easy to compare different regions.

"This unique image is a tremendous resource for scientists and the public  
alike," said John Keller, LRO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space  
Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "It's the latest example of the exciting  
insights and data products LRO has been providing for nearly five years."

The images making up the mosaic were taken by the two LRO Narrow Angle  
Cameras, which are part of the instrument suite known as the Lunar  
Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). The cameras can record a tremendous  
dynamic range of lit and shadowed areas.

"Creation of this giant mosaic took four years and a huge team effort across  
the LRO project," said Mark Robinson, principal investigator for the LROC at  
Arizona State University in Tempe. "We now have a nearly uniform map to  
unravel key science questions and find the best landing spots for future  
exploration."

The entire image measures 931,070 pixels square - nearly 867 billion pixels  
total. A complete printout at 300 dots per inch - considered crisp  
resolution for printed publications - would require a square sheet of paper  
wider than a professional U.S. football field and almost as long. If the  
complete mosaic were processed as a single file, it would require  
approximately 3.3 terabytes of storage space. Instead, the processed mosaic  
was divided into millions of small, compressed files, making it manageable  
for users to view and navigate around the image using a web browser.

LRO entered lunar orbit in June 2009 equipped with seven instrument suites to  
map the surface, probe the radiation environment, investigate water and key  
mineral resources, and gather geological clues about the moon's evolution.

Researchers used additional information about the moon's topography from  
LRO's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, as well as gravity information from  
NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, to assemble  
the mosaic. Launched in September 2011, the GRAIL mission, employing twin  
spacecraft named Ebb and Flow, generated a gravity field map of the moon --  
the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body.

LRO is managed by Goddard for the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) at NASA  
Headquarters in Washington. LROC was designed and built by Malin Space  
Science Systems and is operated by the University of Arizona. NASA's Jet  
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed the GRAIL mission for SMD.

For more information about LRO, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/lro 

To access the complete collection of LROC images, visit:

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/ 

To view the image with zoom and pan capability, visit:

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/gigapan 

-end-

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov 

Nancy Neal-Jones/Elizabeth Zubritsky
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-0039/301-614-5438
nancy.n.jones at nasa.gov/elizabeth.a.zubritsky at nasa.gov