The map in question has more than 12 thousand structures and will be essential for choosing landing sites for future missions
In a stunning milestone for space exploration, China unveiled lunar atlas most complete ever seen, surpassing in detail everything that was done previously. This high-resolution geological map represents the first major update of information about our natural satellite since NASA’s Apollo missions in decades 1960s and 1970s.
Composed of a team of around 100 researchers dedicated for more than a decade, the atlas captures the lunar surface in extraordinary detail. In it, we can find 14 categories of geological structures, 17 different types of rocks, 81 impact basins and a total of 12,341 craters mapped with accuracy.
The initiative, which began in 2012, aimed to facilitate the selection of landing sites and resource exploration for China’s future lunar missions. However, the scientists responsible for the atlas, available in Chinese and English, emphasize that it will also be a valuable guide for other countries venturing into space.
The geological atlas of the Moon is of great importance for studying the evolution of the Moon, selecting the location for a future lunar research station and utilizing lunar resources”, explains the co-researcher Ouyang Ziyuan, research professor at the Institute of Moon Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua news agency. “It can also help us better understand Earth and other planets in the solar system, such as Mars.”
Previous data
To create this unique lunar atlas, researchers used data from the Chang’e-1 mission, an unmanned spacecraft that mapped the lunar surface from orbit between 2007 and 2009. More recent observations, obtained of the lunar surface via the Chang’e-3 and Chang’e-4 lunar rovers in 2013 and 2019, respectively, corroborated the information collected in orbit.
Furthermore, the researchers cross-referenced their data with information from the Indian probe Chandrayaan-1 and NASA’s GRAIL and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter missions, ensuring the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the atlas, according to Live Science.
