Only few things on earth never fail to fascinate us, one of it is the moon. To view it at closer details has always been one of the missions of scientists. This mission has been accomplished by the NASA recently when its Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter captured the the surface of moon with unprecedented detail in a new map. Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter is one of scientific instruments onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft developed at NASA’s Goddard Space.
NASA in a statement said,” The Lunar Orbiter laser Altimeter(LOLA) uses laser ranging to measure the moon’s surface elevation, slope, and roughness in 3D. The primary objective was to produce a global geodetic grid for the moon to which all other observations could be geodetically referenced.”
This is one of the best moon mapping achieved as it is a drastic improvement from the earlier detail of the moon measurements. In the words of Gregory Neumann of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md, “We expect to continue to make measurements at this rate through the next two years of the science phase of the mission and beyond.”
