NASA has released the largest high resolution mosaic showing the moon's north polar region, making it the first interactive depiction of the moon's surface.
The mosaic measures six and a half feet per pixel and it covers the surface area equal to one fourth of United States. The pictures included in the mosaic were captured by the Lunar Orbiter's (LRO) Narrow Angle Cameras, which are part of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). These cameras are designed to capture images of the moon's shadowed and lit regions. The mosaic is composed of 10, 581 images and provides an insight to the texture and terrain of the moon's north polar area.
The whole mosaic measures 931, 070 pixels square and if printed for publication, it will require a sheet of paper as large as a professional football field. Also, if the mosaic is to be squeezed into a single file, it will need 3.3 terabytes of storage. To work around that problem, NASA divided the mosaic into millions of compressed files, allowing users to view it by navigating through different parts of the mosaic using their browser.
"Creation of this giant mosaic took four years and a huge team effort across the LRO project," principal investigator for the LROC at Arizona State University in Tempe, Mark Robinson expressed in a press release. "We now have a nearly uniform map to unravel key science questions and find the best landing spots for future exploration."
The researchers involved in putting this mosaic together used supplementary data gathered by the NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) and the LRO's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter. The GRAIL was launched in 2011 and was designed to generate a map of the moon's gravitational field.
The LRO, on the other hand, was launched in 2009, complete with apparatus to enable it to develop a map of the moon's surface. It was also designed to study the radiation levels, look for water and mineral evidences, and collect geographical data of the moon's surface.
