Interactive Images of Lunar North Pole

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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@nasa.gov

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