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February
29, 2008: NASA has obtained new high-resolution radar
maps of the Moon's south pole--a region the space agency is
considering as a landing site when astronauts return to the
Moon in the years ahead.
"We
now know the south pole has peaks as high as Mt. McKinley
and crater floors four times deeper than the Grand Canyon,"
says Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator for the Exploration
Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. "These
data will be an invaluable tool for advance planning of lunar
missions."
Click
on the image below to view a movie of the craggy landscape
with simulated shadows twirling over the course of a complete
lunar day:
Above:
New radar imagery of the lunar south pole. The movie
simulates solar illumination over the course of a complete
lunar day. [more]
Scientists
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory collected the data using
the Goldstone Solar System Radar located in California's Mojave
Desert. Three times in 2006, JPL scientists targeted the moon's
south polar region using Goldstone's 70-meter radar dish.
The antenna, three-quarters the size of a football field,
sent a 500-kilowatt strong, 90-minute long radar stream 231,800
miles to the Moon. The radar illuminated the rough-hewn lunar
surface over an area measuring about 400 by 250 miles. Signals
were reflected back to two of Goldstone's 34-meter antennas
on Earth. Scientists have been analyzing the echoes ever since,
and the data were released by NASA for the first time this
week.
NASA
has used the data to make a VR movie of a Moon landing from
the point of view of the astronaut. Click
here to watch.
"I
have not been to the Moon, but this imagery is the next best
thing," says Scott Hensley, a scientist at JPL and lead
investigator for the study. "With these data we can see
terrain features as small as a house without even leaving
the office."
 Right:
The 70-meter antenna at the Goldstone complex in California.
NASA
is eying the Moon's south polar region as a possible site
for future outposts. The location has many advantages; for
one thing, there is evidence
of water frozen in deep dark south polar craters. Water
can be split into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to burn as
rocket fuel--or astronauts could simply drink it. Planners
are also looking for "peaks
of eternal light." Tall polar mountains where the
sun never sets might be a good place for a solar power station.
In
recent years, Earth-based radars have done a good job of mapping
the south polar regions of the Moon. In 1997, Goldstone antennas
scanned the area and produced maps with 75 meter resolution.
In 2005, a team led by Don Campbell of Cornell University
improved that figure to 20 meters using the giant Arecibo
radar in Puerto Rico and the Green Bank Telescope in West
Virginia (D. B. Campbell et al, Nature, 443, 835-837,
2006). The JPL survey reported in this story also achieved
20 meter resolution.
As wonderful as they are, however, these radar images will
pale in comparison to next-generation photos from NASA's Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch
in late 2008 and its camera will beam back pictures of the
Moon with details as small as 1 meter.
"The
south pole of the Moon," says Cooke, is going to be "a
beautiful place to explore."
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Editor: Dr.
Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
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