Dec 21, 2010: Moon

[xoxoxoBruce]

Damn it, I posted this last night... must not have hit "submit" after "preview"... again.

Did ya see it? Huh? Didja? The big eclipse that happens once every hundreds of years?

Well, this ain't about that. Same moon, different pictures.



See, all green cheese and paprika.

The images, which were taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO), have boosted the resolution of images of the far side of the moon over 100 times. Digital elevation and terrain maps based on the new data reveal the heavily cratered and bumpy surface of the moon in all its complexity.
~
Dr Neumann said: ‘After about one year taking data, we already have nearly 3 billion data points from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter on board the LRO spacecraft. ‘We expect to continue to make measurements at this rate through the next two years of the science phase of the mission and beyond. Near the poles, we expect to provide near-GPS-like navigational capability as coverage is denser due to the spacecraft's polar orbit.’

Wonder how long it would have taken astronauts to measure that?

link