The science team that oversees the imaging system on board
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has released the
highest resolution near-global topographic map of the Moon ever
created. This new topographic map, from Arizona State University
in Tempe, shows the surface shape and features over nearly the
entire Moon with a pixel scale close to 100 meters (328 feet). A
single measure of elevation (one pixel) is about the size of two
football fields placed side-by-side. Although the Moon is our
closest neighbor, knowledge of its morphology is still limited.
Due to instrumental limitations of previous missions, a global
map of the Moon's topography at high resolution has not existed
until now. With the LRO Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and the Lunar
Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) instrument, scientists can now
accurately portray the shape of the entire Moon at high
resolution. "Our new topographic view of the Moon provides the
dataset that lunar scientists have waited for since the Apollo
era," says Mark Robinson,