“Knowledge of landing site topography, slopes, and hazards will be critical for ensuring safe landings and operations for future lunar missions,” scientist Benjamin Boatwright told IE.The US and other world powers are gearing up to colonize the lunar surface. The research team’s new method could prove crucial for building permanent lunar settlements.
While shape-from-shading produces detailed maps of large terrains, the process can be time-consuming, and mistakes can occur when matching separate images., lead author Benjamin Boatwright and James Head, professor of geological sciences at Brown University, detail how they built on this existing method.
“The planetary science community is built on the idea of public data access, and that’s true on the software side as well,” he continued. “Some very talented people at NASA have spent their careers developing and documenting these tools so that anyone can use them, and I think we can all benefit from that.”One example is the image alignment algorithm Boatwright and Head used for their technique.
Their study, which the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center supported, used data from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Both are instruments aboard NASA’s. The LRO has been mapping the Moon in high-definition since 2019, and data from the orbiter will undoubtedly be used for the upcoming Artemis missions.Refinements like the one Boatwright and Head made to the image alignment algorithm will ultimately result in higher-quality images.
A study published earlier this year showed that the lunar south pole is more unstable than previously thought. This is due to moonquakes caused by surface warping, caused by the gradual“Knowledge of landing site topography, slopes, and hazards will be critical for ensuring safe landings and operations for future lunar missions,” Boatwright told IE. “NASA is planning to build an Artemis Base Camp near the south pole of the Moon where illumination conditions are highly variable.
Boatwright and Head’s new technique, alongside improvements in computing since Apollo 17, means Artemis crews will have a much better understanding of what awaits them before they even reach the launch pad.