The team tested their approach on an area centered in the Mare Ingenii, a region on the far side of the moon. This is a big advantage when building terrain models for multiple areas. The result is that the new approach doesn’t require any prior assumptions about the terrain, and produces high-resolution terrain maps in one try, making it faster than existing methods. This is the first time that anyone has produced a topographic model using this equation. In their new method, Fernandes and her colleague Klaus Mosegaard worked around this by solving an equation that relates the angles of incoming sunlight and the shape of the terrain. Researchers have developed an additional, novel way of creating 3D maps of the moon’s surface that could offer increased assurance of the actual terrain that explorers and rovers will encounter.
Now, there is a new tool that could help determine which is best. It has drawn up a short list of places to touch down, using high-resolution models of the lunar surface. Such ice could potentially be used as drinking water and as a source of fuel, helping future explorers spend longer periods on the lunar surface.īut before any of this can happen, NASA needs to select a safe landing site with navigable routes to these potential water deposits. In these permanently shadowed regions, frigid temperatures may have persisted long enough to have trapped water, frozen below the surface. They will be investigating areas inside deep craters where the sun never rises above the surrounding walls.
What they find there could change the course of lunar exploration. It will be the first return since the 1970s, and the first time humans will explore the moon’s south polar region.
As early as 2025, NASA’s astronauts will be back on the moon.
0 kommentar(er)
