Best Moon Map Ever

NASA Probe Beams Home Best Moon Map Ever

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. CREDIT: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/DLR/ASU  View full size image

 Scientists have stitched together the highest-resolution topographic map of the moon ever created, using observations made by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft.

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.

"Our new topographic view of the moon provides the dataset that lunar scientists have waited for since the Apollo era," said Mark Robinson of Arizona State University, principal investigator of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), in a statement Thursday (Nov. 17).

"We can now determine slopes of all major geologic terrains on the moon at 100-meter scale, determine how the crust has deformed, better understand impact crater mechanics, investigate the nature of volcanic features and better plan future robotic and human missions to the moon," Robinson added.