LRO/LOLA Lunar South Pole Flyover

  • Released Monday, March 15th, 2010
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:54PM
  • ID: 3686

The Lunar Reconnaissance Oribiter (LRO) was launched on June 18, 2009. Its mission is to map the moon's surface, find safe landing sites, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment, and demonstrate new technology. One of the instruments on board is the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) which measures landing site slopes, lunar surface roughness, and has begun generation of a high resolution 3D map of the Moon.

This visualization uses Clementine data for the global view of the moon, but then transitions to using only LRO/LOLA DEM with a neutral gray texture when flying around the lunar south pole. The DEM by itself creates an amazingly realistic view of the lunar southpole. As better maps are created from the other instruments aboard LRO, an even clearer picture of the moon will emerge.

Please note that this visualization is match-frame rendered to The Moon's South Pole in 3D via LRO/LOLA First Light Data (#3633).

This animation flys around the moon's south pole. Some of the craters on this tour are: Amundsen, Cabeus, Haworth, Faustini, Malapert, Laveran, Scott, Shackleton, Shoemaker, and Wiechert

Sample animation using the match-frame rendered crater annotations from animation #3633 as an overlay to annotate the craters in this flyover.

Print resolution still of the moon.

Print resolution still of the moon.

Print resolution still of our simulated approach to the lunar surface.

Print resolution still of our simulated approach to the lunar surface.

Print resolution still over the lunar south pole. Craters depicted in this image are Laveran, Wiechert, Amundsen, Faustini, Shackleton, Shoemaker, Scott, and Haworth.

Print resolution still over the lunar south pole. Craters depicted in this image are Laveran, Wiechert, Amundsen, Faustini, Shackleton, Shoemaker, Scott, and Haworth.

Print resolution still of the lunar south pole. Top down view of the south pole region.

Print resolution still of the lunar south pole. Top down view of the south pole region.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Datasets used in this visualization

Clementine 750-nm Basemap (Collected with the UVVIS Camera sensor)
Mosaic 1994/02/26-1994/05/05
See more visualizations using this data set
LRO DEM (A.K.A. Digital Elevation Map) (Collected with the LOLA sensor)
See more visualizations using this data set

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.