Applications to Lunar Remote Sensing

Abstract

This chapter addresses applications in the domain of remote sensing, especially the generation of elevation maps of the lunar surface. In contrast to e.g. the planetMars, which has been topographically mapped at high resolution by laser altimetry by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in the 1990s and more recently by stereophotogrammetry based on high-resolution imagery of the European spacecraft Mars Express, for only about a quarter of the lunar surface fairly accurate topographic data are available, which date back to the Apollo era of the late 1960s and early 1970s. On large scales, the lunar surface has been topographically mapped by the Clementine spacecraft in 1994 based on laser altimetre (LIDAR) measurements, but both the lateral resolution and the vertical accuracy of this data set is fairly low (cf. Section 7.1). While the LIDAR measurements clearly show large-scale structures such as the previously unknown south pole Aitken basin, they do not reveal subtle small-scale details on the floors of lunar craters or structures of non-impact (endogenic) origin such as ridges, tectonic faults, or volcanic domes. Hence, for large parts of the lunar surface no small-scale topographic data are available, with the exception of crater depths and mountain heights derived from image-based shadow length measurements.