LRO images moon landings

Thursday, 8 September, 2011

NASAs Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been the talk of the wires recently. LRO is part of NASAs mission to go back to the moon and carries seven instruments on board, the most pertinent for geomorphologists being the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. These use much of the technology developed as part of the MOLA and GLAS missions to Mars and Earth respectively. Orbiting at 50 km it has been providing unprecedented elevation data and high resolution imagery (down to 1 m). As part of satellite manoeuvres, the orbit was temporarily decreased to ~25 km (are the Americans going metric on us?!) allowing very high resolution to be LROC imagery to be obtained. Both the BBC and National Geographic explain some of the remarkable imagery (read: imagery of the Apollo missions).

Add comment

Fill out the form below to add your own comments