Google Moon: one giant leap for cyber-exploration

July 9, 10:07 AMSpace News ExaminerPatricia Phillips

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As the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing approaches, Google Moon offers a great way to explore the Apollo era lunar missions with photos, maps, and scientific information. Google explains the site's resources

• Visible - A mosaic of images taken by the Clementine mission. This is a black-and-white version of what you would see if you were in orbit around the moon. This composite imagery was prepared by the USGS.
• Elevation - A lunar terrain map generated by the USGS in conjunction with the The Unified Lunar Control Network 2005, and shaded using an airbrushed shaded relief map. This map is color-coded by altitude, so you can use the color key at the lower left to estimate elevations.
• Apollo - A collection of placemarks that tell the story of the Apollo missions that landed on the moon. This includes stories, quotes, images, panoramas, audio clips, and links to videos of the astronauts' adventures on the lunar surface.
• Charts - A collection of geological and topographic charts of various regions of the moon. Learn more about the charts.

The application, which works like Google Maps, was developed with scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center. Their portal will tell you how to construct your own moon map.

Image: Earth Rise/Apollo era NASA