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

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 10:46:30 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201403191746.s2JHkUsB014031_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

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
Received on Wed 19 Mar 2014 01:46:30 PM PDT