Using the cameras of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) space probe, NASA scientists have created a very high resolution map, two-meters (six-and-a-half feet) per pixel, of the region around the Moon’s North Pole. This isn’t a simple but very detailed image, it’s an interactive map like Google Earth.

Going to section of the site of Arizona State University, which works with NASA on the LRO mission, dedicated to this interactive map, anyone can explore the region of the Moon’s North Pole zooming in and out to see details such as the textures and the shading of the terrain. It’s a job that took about four years to shoot a total of 10,581 photographs to compose a mosaic that offers the public the extraordinary details of this lunar region.

The two cameras of the LRO spacecraft called Narrow Angle Cameras are part of the suite called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) used to create this map. It’s thanks to them that it was possible to represent the variety of light and shadow of the lunar polar region.

The distortion in the creation of a two-dimensional map was limited by using a stereographic projection. To get the best result, scientists from NASA and Arizona State University used the ephemeris and data from another instrument of the LRO spacecraft, the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) and data on lunar gravity detected by two other probes, the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) known as Ebb and Flow.

The complete image is composed of nearly 867 billion pixels. A complete printout at 300 dpi, a standard resolution for printed publications, would require a square sheet wider than a football field. A single file containing the entire map would require approximately 3.3 terabytes of storage space but it’s fragmented into millions of small files to allow a practical and interactive use, also via the web.

The enormous work done to create this map isn’t just for fans to have fun exploring a lunar area but also to scientists. The ability to examine the North Pole of the Moon with all those details allow them to study our satellite in a better way and find the best places for possible future space missions.

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