LRO Team Begins to Release New Image Series

The LROC Team begins a new series of Featured Images highlighting the regions of interest for potential future human and robotic lunar exploration that LRO is imaging for NASA's Constellation Program. There are 50 of these regions, which were selected prior to LRO’s launch based on expert input from the lunar science community and NASA engineers. For each of these 50 regions, the LROC Team is collecting a comprehensive set of image data.

These images, and the associated information products derived from them (such as boulder distribution maps, slope maps and digital terrain models), will guide engineers and scientists as they develop their plans for how they would continue to explore the moon both robotically and with humans.

Lunar scientists have been studying the vast data returned from the Apollo missions for almost 40 years. As a result, much is known about the moon. Even so, there remains much that we do not know about the moon. Accordingly, each of these 50 regions is associated with either an immensely compelling lunar science question or an exploration-enabling resource, or both, that will be useful to future explorers. However, these 50 regions aren't intended as actual NASA landing sites, but instead are representative locations whose study will provide mission planners and lunar scientists working on future human and robotic lunar exploration with lots of data for a comprehensive suite of interesting and relevant terrains all over the lunar surface.

For more information visit here - http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/lroc-20100107-new-images.html