After a trip of over 200,000 miles, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back its first images from the moon - and they look great. 

Kodak supplied the CCD image sensors used in all three cameras of the orbiter, which will ultimately provide images up to 0.5 meters in resolution - about the same as what's available from commercial programs such as Google Earth.  Currently, the LRO is still in its commissioning orbit, where the equipment is first turned on and adjusted, and the orbit is modified to its final trajectory (which today looks more like an ellipse, rather than a circle, around the moon).  But even while these final adjustments are made, the images coming back are still pretty incredible.

Here's one of the first images sent back by the LRO - taken when the orbiter was flying at the edge of the lighted region of the moon (an area of lunar "sunrise" or "sunset").  Because of this, the shadows are a little exaggerated, but it still gives a good idea of the level of detail available from this new instrument.

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

Since the LRO orbits the moon about once every 2 hours, it's pretty straightforward to image the same location from slightly different angles - making it easy to come up with 3D images of the moon (don't forget to use your 3D glasses):

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

You can even "fly along" with the LRO in movies that have been made from the series of images it has sent back:

But the clear highlight of the first set of images to come back from the LRO are those of the Apollo landing sites, which came just in time for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.  These show not only the lunar modules and some scientific equipment left on the moon, but even the trails of astronauts' footprints on the lunar surface:

Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle.  Image Width:  282 meters (about 925 ft.) [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

It's nice to know that 40 years later, all of these things are right where we left them.

As the orbit stabilizes over the next several weeks, images from the LRO should have two to three times better resolution than the pictures shown here - so future passes over these sites will only produce even sharper images, showing these artifacts in even more detail.  But for now, it's good to know that the cameras on board the LRO are working just as advertised, ready to provide an unprecedented set of close-ups of our nearest neighbor in space. 

As a reminder, there are a lot of different ways you can follow along with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on its mission, including web sites from NASA, the Goddard Space Flight Center, and Arizona State University (where the project team for the cameras is based), as well as accounts on both Facebook and Twitter. 

P.S.  Can't get enough of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter?  Arizona State University has put together a paper model of the LRO you can print up, cut out, and glue together.  Now you've got all the things you need to send your own orbiter to the moon.*

*Launch Rocket not included.

Comments