Moon Tours is a free app from NASA that makes it easy to conduct detailed explorations of the lunar surface using a mobile device. Moon Tours is the mobile version of the NASA’s Lunar Mapping and Modeling Portal (LMMP). LMMP (http://www.lmmp.nasa.gov) is the repository for over 600+ geospatial lunar data products and imagery from historical and current lunar missions for use by scientists, mission planners, students, and the public. Moon Tours allows users to view all the publicly available lunar data from the LMMP and perform many of the functions available on the web browser version of the portal from their mobile devices. Available data products include scientifically referenced digital elevation maps (DEMs), slope maps, rock and hazard maps, gravity maps, mineralogy maps, and imagery ranging from the Apollo missions to the latest data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Whether you are a scientist, student, or just have an interest in our Moon, Moon Tours will show you lunar topography as you have never seen it before. With Moon Tours, you will be able to:
- View the map by panning and zooming using touch gestures.
- Overlay any of the 600+ layers into the current view and adjusting the transparency of any layer
- Determine the latitude and longitude of the current view as well as maintain context of the current view relative to the entire map
- Calculate the distance between two locations on the lunar surface
- Search for the names of features such as craters and hills
- Read an abstract about a particular data layer, or a longer document providing detailed information about the layer with citations and references to relevant scientific papers
- View lunar terrain data rendered in realtime 3D
- View a curated list of interesting sites on the lunar surface
- Generate interactive 3D models of regions on the moon and save views for later analysis
Moon Tours is currently available for free download for iPhone and iPad from https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/moon-tours/id696977262?mt=8. An Android version is currently in development and will be available shortly.
NASA’s Moon Tours app. Image credit: NASA / SSERVI Staff.