Moon Images By SMART-1 Options

[Phil Stooke]

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

[Phil Stooke]

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

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

Phil

[GravityWaves]

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. "

"A lunar mission would be a building block and would not be against Europe or against cooperation," he said, adding that the Germans had discussed the project with NASA, ESA and the Russian Space Agency.

[Phil Stooke]

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

Phil

[alan]

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

[Phil Stooke]

Here's a map of SMART-1 coverage by resolution. Yellow is coverage better than 250 m/pixel, essentialy global. Red is better than 100 m/pixel, most of the southern hemisphere. Black is better than 50 m/pixel. The central longitude of the map is zero degrees, the ends are 180 degrees, north at top.

And goodish news - the images themselves are still being worked on for ingestion into the PSA, ESA's version of PDS. So we will get them eventually. I understand that calibration has been difficult because camera properties changed during the mission.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

And here it is with a Clementine mosaic overlay.

Phil

[Anders]

Emily noted that the SMART-1 data has been released:

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...fobjectid=47714

The complete archive of data sets from ESA's 3-year SMART-1 mission to the Moon has been released to the scientific community.

I have just started to look around in the archive, but it looks like a huge FTP archve

with files like:

File:AMI_EE7_031003_00004_01000.IMG 292 KB 07/08/2010 12:37:00 PM
File:AMI_EE5_031003_00002_00010.IMG 164 KB 07/08/2010 12:42:00 PM
File:AMI_EE3_031003_00005_10000.IMG 548 KB 07/08/2010 12:51:00 PM
File:AMI_EE7_031003_00001_00010.IMG 292 KB 07/08/2010 12:53:00 PM

I do not yet have any personal experience with processing raw data, but it would be fun to be able to browse these images.

CODE

PDS_VERSION_ID                 = PDS3                                        
                                                                              
/***      FILE CHARACTERISTICS                                            ***/
FILE_NAME                      = "AMI_EE1_031003_00001_00010.IMG"            
RECORD_TYPE                    = FIXED_LENGTH                                
RECORD_BYTES                   = 1024                                        
FILE_RECORDS                   = 292                                          
LABEL_RECORDS                  = 20                                          
INTERCHANGE_FORMAT             = BINARY

So I guess that it's just a matter of dig into the documentation or wait for someone here to point
out what tools are available.

[ugordan]

There are both raw and calibrated products available. However, the way the metadata is organized makes it a pain to see which image was taken when and of what target. The browse thumbnails seem to be actually imbedded inside the IMGs so that's not really helpful. Also, the calibrated products seem to be missing all the lunar phase images that also show Earth in the FOV, in fact entire such orbits of interest are missing from the calibrated products.

[Phil Stooke]

Yes, I don't get that browse image thing at all. Let's have a folder of browse images, and a clickable map interface!

Phil

[ugordan]

Here's a Moon approach sequence of 13 images. Supposedly shows the north pole.

[Phil Stooke]

I managed to pull this one out, just to prove I could.

Phil

[elakdawalla]

To be honest, that image doesn't look so great. Does it even improve on Clementine? Do these images have any use beyond their novelty value ("hey, Europe had a lunar orbiter once too")?

Here's one of those North Pole images from when it was released back in 2004. Neat to see it's part of an longer sequence, and definitely an unusual viewpoint on the Moon.

[ugordan]

AMIE is not exactly the best imager in the world. It appears to be affected by scattered light, is fairly low resolution and uses lossy wavelet compression with varying degrees of compression. Though in all honesty, that image of Phil's looks like it's taken in high sun so only albedo variations are seen (contrast-enhanced?).

[Phil Stooke]

See my map, higher up the page - the black areas, including the south pole itself, are 50 m/pixel, better than Clementine's UV-VIS images. So some small areas are better. Plus, the polar coverage was much better in time sampling - all seasons at both poles (Clementine operated for only about 3 months).

One unfortunate thing is that there was only a short period during which the SMART-1 images were the best. Now we have them, but most people are more likely to want to use LROC WAC images, or others (Kaguya, and ISRO is said to be releasing its Chandrayaan images by the end of this year) if they can get them.

I just chose my image at random, not even noting where it was from.

Phil