New mapping method could aid exploration of moon, Mars and beyond - Space.com

Researchers find mathematical trick to combining planetary surface data.

Researchers have discovered a method for making high-resolution maps of planetary surfaces like the moon's by combining available imagery and topography data.

And although photographs offer a sense of surface features, it's difficult to translate images into specific heights and depths.

However, a new method combines topographic data with degrees of shading of sunlight present in optical images to provide much more accurate assessments of landforms and structures.

Different missions deliver very different data resolutions, so combining different sources of data in different resolutions presents a huge mathematical problem.

By combining high-resolution images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's LROC camera with lower-resolution data from the spacecraft's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA), the authors of the paper state they increased the resolution of the topography from around 200 feet (60 meters) per pixel to 2.95 feet (0.9 m) per pixel. !

Going forward, the authors argue, the method can be applied to extract precise topographic details on rock formations on planetary bodies such as the moon, Mars, asteroids and any other worlds for which topographic data is available.

The method can support a range of different purposes, including determining the safety of astronauts and rovers or finding geologically interesting sites, and it can be applied to images coming from satellites, rovers or other spacecraft.

The research is described in an article published June 8 in the journal Planetary and Space Science (opens in new tab). .