I'm waiting for the altimetry data from LRO! It's remarkable that we have better data for Mars than we do for the Moon. How good will the SMART images be, and what will the total coverage be? How will it compare to the Clementine mapping?

To me, the intertesting thing about SMART-1 was the ion propulsion. It was the second spacecraft to really use ion engines to get somewhere. Deep Space-1 used an American electrostatic ion engine, SMART-1 uses a Russian Hall-effect engine.

The SPD engines (statzionariykh plazmennykh dvigatelyakh )were pioneered by OKB Fakel in the early 1970s, used for station keeping of Meteor and Yamal satellites. Their most powerful engines can produce up to 80 gram-force of thrust and a specific impulse of 3000 sec. That's almost 10 times more efficiency than chemical rocket engines (whcih max out around 400 sec for the best of them).

The Phobos-Grunt mission will contain 3 of the SPD-140 engines. Keeping my fingers crossed that mission will really happen (and actually work).

Resolution of the Clementine cameras at its periapsis of 425 km was 115 m/pixel for the UV/visible camera (6 bands), 178m for the near-IR camera (6 bands), 65 m for the 1-band long-IR camera, and 30 m for the camera associated with the Lidar (5 bands). That periapsis was moved from 30 deg S to 30 deg N over the mission. Apoapsis was 8300 km.

Resolution of SMART-1's AMIE camera (3 bands, all within the range of Clementine's UV/visible camera) at its periapsis of 300 km is 27 m/pixel. Apoapsis is 3000 km. Periapsis was left at the south pole during the primary mission, but has now been moved to 30 deg S.

Area coverage by the two missions can perhaps be guessed at from these figures -- obviously they've covered the Moon's southern hemisphere much better than its northern one.

As for Clementine's Lidar coverage, there's an excellent summary at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/Master...=1994-004A&ex=4 .

Personally, I'm a lot more interested in seeing the results from SMART's near-IR spectrometer (never taken to the Moon before) and its X-ray spectrometer (first map outside a narrow equatorial zone).

Thanks. I've looked at the Clementine LIDAR data. It is too course to be of much use for bumpmapping.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=45962

A sudden flurry of activity at last from ESA, demonstrating that they had the images all the time:

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMN1GL8IOE_index_0.html

There's 136 images in that movie alone - more than we've seen to date.

Bob Shaw

Imagine if these top-secret images of the Moon had been leaked early. Anarchy!

Damn, Bob, you're right!
They say: "From these distances, a series of images could be obtained with some overlap between them, that allowed to build a mosaic during a good part of the orbit". Partial result should be something like this:

These are only 7 frames (I excluded very first ones due to heavy over-exposure); some enlargement was needed on first ones, so spacecraft was in the approaching phase of it's elongated orbit (1000x5000 Km).
Any volunteer wants to complete this work for entire orbit?

...and this is the final portion, showing north polar region between Carpenter and Goja craters:

Marco:

Good stuff!

It's sad that we're reduced to silly things like frame-grabbing, but at least there's something there for us to play with at last.

Bob Shaw

An oblique look on the north lunar far west:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/SEM787BUQPE_1.html

Here below an enhanced version (note the strange solarization effect on bright features around the low/left missec box)

A new SMART-1 image was released recently:

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/SEMP7QOFHTE_0.html

It shows Shackleton crater at the South Pole. Here I have added it in to an earlier mosaic of Clementine HIRES camera images. It fills a gap not well seen by Clementine. The big black circle is
Shackleton, and Earth is towards the top.
Phil

Here'a a new SMART-1 image release...

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/SEMFRKV681F_1.html

Phil

Reuters is carrying a story about a new German orbiter

Germany plans unmanned lunar orbit
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews...=22&sp=true

"The project would be called LEO -- Lunar Exploration Orbiter -- and could be fired into space in 2012 if decisions are made and sufficient financing found, Hintze said.

He said initial costs for the project would be around 350 million euros ($513.6 million), which would cover the planning, building and launch of the spacecraft. "

Another version of the South Pole mosaic above. Another Smart-1 image has been added to my Clementine High Resolution base.

Phil

ESA has released a mosaic of the north pole.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/SEMMH029R9F_0.html