NASA Released an Amazing 3D Map of the Moon

• 
  via Tech Crunch

  As we all know, there's a far side of the moon that Earth never sees. It has been glimpsed by astronauts and satellites a few times, but the resulting photos haven't been as high res as we would hope in our age of incredible technology. For something we see almost every night, our one and only moon, you would hope that we could at least see it in detail. 

  But there are a few obstacles, including the fact that the moon moves at around a mile per second with a light source that's 93 million miles away, and to accurately map it topographically it must be exact within 100 feet. 

  This is where NASA comes in. 

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• 
  via Tech Crunch

  NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) was built with these problems in mind, and had been orbiting the moon for a decade, taking photos and measurements the whole time. The LRO has a sophisticated multispectral imager on board, which can take an extremely high resolution photo of a small portion of the moon at a time. Since the LRO has been orbiting for 10 years, it's managed to cover the entire surface of the moon, including the side that inspired Pink Floyd (the dark side). 

  But the map isn't only 2D - while images were being taken of the moon's surface, a laser altimeter has been measuring the topography of the moon. This works by sending a pulsed laser towards the surface of the moon and tracking how long it takes to come back and how strong it is. From this, the laser altimeter can tell how far away the surface is, it's altitude, and the structure of the surface (rocky or soft, for example). 

• via Tech Crunch

  The data gathered by the laser altimeter is used to create a displacement map, which is like a topographic map but instead of the height changing, the color does. Once you overlay this with the photographic map of many high-resolution photos of the moon's surface sewn together, and wrap this around a sphere, it created a virtual topographic globe. And that's exactly what NASA has done. 

  This map is available to download for free, so we're guessing that CG artists are going to have a field day with this amazing new technology. It might even be able to help experts plan future lunar colonies. However it will be used, it's pretty great that we can explore the moon from the comfort of our lounge rooms. Where there's plenty of oxygen and gravity to go around. 

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