By Anna Xie
China has unveiled the world’s only high-definition geologic atlas of the entire Moon, the first major update of lunar data since NASA’s Apollo-era program in the 1960s and 70s. This geological map of the moon, made by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) took over a decade to complete. CAS got research data from missions by the U.S., Japan, and India. The map provides information on the geological history of the moon, its 14 types of structures and 17 types of rocks, as well as its 12,341 craters and 81 impact basins.
The map utilizes the elliptical Mollweide projection. The CAS also did stereographic projections which separately center the North and South poles. The scale of this map is 1:2.5 million scale, doubling the previous scale of 1:5 million. This is the highest resolution that we have seen of the moon to date.
The lunar mapping project began in 2012, and China’s mission orbiters, landers, and rovers collected data to help build the map. In this new map, the CAS used previous missions from other countries to cross reference their own missions.
Published in Chinese and English, the maps provide up-to-date scientific references for future lunar research and exploration. This set of maps can be used to study the evolution of the Moon and help understand the planets and the solar system as a whole. The map is available for free at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ National Space Science Center website. The atlas has been integrated into a cloud platform called the Digital Moon. Work has already begun to improve the resolution of the maps and produce regional maps of higher accuracy.
Sources:
space.com