Smart-1 Images of the Moon

The European-built Smart-1 spacecraft has sent back its first close-up
images of the Moon, showing the cratered landscape in glorious detail.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0...ch/4209995.stm

Gareth
--
Help the Tsunami Victims
http://www.justgiving.com/tsunami

Hasn't the Moon been completely mapped (photos and laser altimeter) by
previous missions? This looks like one of those "leaf raking" projects
for scientists.

Gareth Slee wrote:
The European-built Smart-1 spacecraft has sent back its first close-up
images of the Moon, showing the cratered landscape in glorious detail.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0...ch/4209995.stm

Gareth

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 20:27:02 -0000, "Gareth Slee"
wrote:

The European-built Smart-1 spacecraft has sent back its first close-up
images of the Moon, showing the cratered landscape in glorious detail.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0...ch/4209995.stm

Wes Higgins is far less expensive. ;-)

http://www.higginsandsons.com/astro/

---
Michael McCulloch

Perhaps, but at what resolution? We've learned that as resolution increases
more discoveries are made. Remember that at a resolution of tens of meters you
won't recognize most objects on the Earth for what they are.
--
Sincerely,
--- Dave
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It don't mean a thing
unless it has that certain "je ne sais quoi"
Duke Ellington
----------------------------------------------------------------------

"Tim Killian" wrote in message
...
Hasn't the Moon been completely mapped (photos and laser altimeter) by
previous missions? This looks like one of those "leaf raking" projects for
scientists.

Gareth Slee wrote:
The European-built Smart-1 spacecraft has sent back its first close-up
images of the Moon, showing the cratered landscape in glorious detail.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0...ch/4209995.stm

Gareth

Tim Killian wrote:

Hasn't the Moon been completely mapped (photos and laser altimeter) by
previous missions?

No. The state of our knowledge about the Moon's surface is much worse
than it is for either Venus or Mars. The only post-Apollo mapping was
done by Clementine in the mid-90's, as far as I know, and the quality
and completeness of the data it returned isn't comparable.

A quick way to see this is to compare the globes offered by Sky and
Telescope.

http://skyandtelescope.com/shopatsky...lobes&Pag e=1

The "NASA Moon Globe" uses the same hand-painted map used on globes sold
by Rand McNally 35 years ago.

- Ernie http://home.comcast.net/~erniew

"Ernie Wright" wrote in message
...
Tim Killian wrote:

Hasn't the Moon been completely mapped (photos and laser altimeter) by
previous missions?

No. The state of our knowledge about the Moon's surface is much worse
than it is for either Venus or Mars. The only post-Apollo mapping was
done by Clementine in the mid-90's, as far as I know, and the quality
and completeness of the data it returned isn't comparable.

A quick way to see this is to compare the globes offered by Sky and
Telescope.

http://skyandtelescope.com/shopatsky...lobes&Pag e=1

The "NASA Moon Globe" uses the same hand-painted map used on globes sold
by Rand McNally 35 years ago.


If true, good point. In fact, in examining my images of the Moon, and I'm not
an enthusiastic lunar observer, I noticed a few features that are not mapped in
The Atlas of the Moon by Antonin Rukl. These are probably hard to observe, and
I only saw them when the local Solar angle was quite small and shadows long, but
it showed me that after so many years of observations, that we really don't know
everything about the Moon.

The Apollo program? Great insitu measurements, but nothing close to global
coverage. Think of landing a half dozen balloons scattered across the entire
state of California, not at the most interesting sites, but at the ones where a
balloon can land safely. I hope you can see that you really won't know much
about California.

Or photograph California with a resolution of no better than 50 meters or so
from three miles up. You won't see cars, most trucks, a lot of buildings, and
certainly no people. So the finer the resolution, the more you can learn.

Most of the world is not known to most people. Even the locals don't know every
square yard of their own local land. Many places are very hard to access, but
you get the false impression that we do know it simply because we've got a
Landsat or similar image of it. I hope that, from the discourse I just gave,
that anyone who thinks we know the Moon simply because we've got atlases and
images of it on file will see that this is a fallacious viewpoint.
--
Sincerely,
--- Dave
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It don't mean a thing
unless it has that certain "je ne sais quoi"
Duke Ellington
----------------------------------------------------------------------

They should've dump a dozen or so robots on the Moon surfuce, crawling
around for years, finding who knows what.
It can be done fraction of the price of one of the Mars mission.
JS


"Ernie Wright" wrote in message
...
Tim Killian wrote:

Hasn't the Moon been completely mapped (photos and laser altimeter) by
previous missions?

No. The state of our knowledge about the Moon's surface is much worse
than it is for either Venus or Mars. The only post-Apollo mapping was
done by Clementine in the mid-90's, as far as I know, and the quality
and completeness of the data it returned isn't comparable.

A quick way to see this is to compare the globes offered by Sky and
Telescope.

http://skyandtelescope.com/shopatsky...lobes&Pag e=1

The "NASA Moon Globe" uses the same hand-painted map used on globes sold
by Rand McNally 35 years ago.

- Ernie http://home.comcast.net/~erniew

"Tim Killian" wrote in message
...
Hasn't the Moon been completely mapped (photos and laser altimeter) by
previous missions? This looks like one of those "leaf raking" projects
for scientists.

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/obj...objectid=31413
Quote

"SMART-1's camera AMIE will enable scientists to study the Moon's
topography and surface texture once again. It measures visible light at
a million points in a field of view 5 degrees wide, and filters can
select yellow light, red light or very short infrared rays. By looking
at selected regions from different angles, and under different lighting
conditions, AMIE will provide new clues to how the lunar surface has
evolved.

"With longer infrared rays, the infrared spectrometer SIR will map the
surface distribution of minerals such as pyroxenes, olivines and
feldspars. It will do this in far more detail than Clementine did, when
it scanned the lunar surface at six different infrared bands. SIR
distinguishes about 256 wavelength bands, from 0.9 to 2.4 microns. The
mineralogy will reveal effects of cratering and maria formation, and the
nature of subsurface layers exposed by fractures in the Moon's crust.

End of Quote

In addition, there is an X-Ray spectrometer which will detect X-ray
fluorescence allowing surface element abundancies to be determined.

Thanks Gareth,

Also at:
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMY5JO3E4E_index_0.html

Clear Skies

Chuck Taylor

Do you observe the moon?
Try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunar-observing/

Are you interested in understanding optics?
Try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ATM_Optics_Software/
************************************

"Gareth Slee" wrote in message
news
The European-built Smart-1 spacecraft has sent back its first close-up
images of the Moon, showing the cratered landscape in glorious detail.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0...ch/4209995.stm

Gareth
--
Help the Tsunami Victims
http://www.justgiving.com/tsunami

They could have, but what two or three instruments are you going to put in each
robot, since if you're going to launch so many you need to make each as simple
as possible for cost reasons? And then you need to monitor them. Even if you
store information in each robot for later retrieval, you need time on radio
telescopes to retrieve the data. High gain antennas on each robot adds
complexity in pointing the dish and finding Earth relative to the robots current
position.

Monitoring a lot of robots on the Moon is going to chew up a lot of DSN time.
My guess is individual and separate frequencies for each robot, so each needs to
be tuned to and listened separately. One wonders if the TDRS system can be used
to do the monitoring. Whether this is doable or not I don't know.

And those are just some of the issues that need to be considered. NASA has
studied this idea, and I believe it's still in the works.

Again, a good idea that might be used some day, but it isn't as simple as it
appears, like all ideas, and it has its costs and tradeoffs.

--
Sincerely,
--- Dave

----------------------------------------------------------------------
It don't mean a thing
unless it has that certain "je ne sais quoi"
Duke Ellington
----------------------------------------------------------------------

"Szaki" wrote in message
...
They should've dump a dozen or so robots on the Moon surfuce, crawling around
for years, finding who knows what.
It can be done fraction of the price of one of the Mars mission.
JS


"Ernie Wright" wrote in message
...
Tim Killian wrote:

Hasn't the Moon been completely mapped (photos and laser altimeter) by
previous missions?

No. The state of our knowledge about the Moon's surface is much worse
than it is for either Venus or Mars. The only post-Apollo mapping was
done by Clementine in the mid-90's, as far as I know, and the quality
and completeness of the data it returned isn't comparable.

A quick way to see this is to compare the globes offered by Sky and
Telescope.

http://skyandtelescope.com/shopatsky...lobes&Pag e=1

The "NASA Moon Globe" uses the same hand-painted map used on globes sold
by Rand McNally 35 years ago.

- Ernie http://home.comcast.net/~erniew