According to her announcement NASA, scientists took advantage of the cameras installed on the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) spacecraft to create the largest photo high resolution of the lunar north pole.
The end result is a mosaic of 10.581 images with a resolution of nearly 1,9 meters per pixel, which allow detailed observation of the Moon's relief. The mosaic is uploaded to a website where visitors are allowed to zoom or rotate any picture, in the regions of interest.
As John Keller, who works on the LRO program, told the International Business Times, "this is an image that is an excellent source of information for both the scientific community and the public." As he notes, it is the latest addition from pictures and data produced by the LRO over the past five years.
In order to capture the mosaic images, the two LOR narrow angle cameras were used, which in turn are part of the larger system LROC (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera). Four years of effort was required to complete the mosaic.
According to the space agency, printing the entire mosaic, which has a total resolution of 867 billion pixels, would require the use of a sheet of paper as wide as a professional-grade football field. Additionally, if the mosaic were a single file, it would take up 3,3 Terabytes of storage space. To make it viewable in a standard web browser, it required dividing it into millions of smaller and compressed files. The LRO spacecraft entered lunar orbit in June 2009, carrying seven sets of equipment and instruments. These sets of equipment are used to map the surface of the Moon, explore the environment, research for water and other vital minerals and to collect geological data. The North Lunar Pole Mosaic is available at: http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/gigapan/.
