Friday, September 2, 2011

Google Moon

Like Google Earth, there is Google Moon.  You can see the Apollo landing sites here.  But not in great detail.

I wanted to see more detail, but this was good enough for my purposes.  My purpose was to check out the idea that you could drive across the lunar surface from the poles to the equator.  That seems doubtful to me now because of the ruggedness of the lunar landscape.

The rovers on the latter missions covered some distance, it appears.  The distance between the poles and the equator would be in at least 1500 miles or so.  The surface would have to be relatively level to make that long of a trip.  That doesn't exist on the Earth either, but the Moon is even more rugged than that.  Plus, whatever conveyance you have will not be up to the journey, most likely.

Update:

By the way, here's a video of a mission to produce a 3D map of the lunar surface. It doesn't give that much detail though.






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