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 resolution images of nearly 1,9 measures per pixel, which allow detailed observation of the Moon's motif. The mosaic has climbed to a site where visitors are allowed to zoom or rotate any image in areas 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.
For the λήψη of the mosaic photographs used the LOR's two narrow-angle cameras, which in turn form part of the wider 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. Moreover, if the mosaic constituted one and only archive, this 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, investigate the environment, search for water and other vital minerals, and collect geological data. The North Lunar Pole Mosaic is available at: http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/gigapan/.