LPI Announces New Lunar Science and Exploration Website
October 11, 2007
After a 35-year hiatus, NASA is returning humans to the Moon. The agency and its partners in academia, industry, and the international community are engaged in an exciting new exploration initiative designed to study the lunar surface robotically beginning in 2008 and with crewed landers before 2020.
To support that activity, the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) has developed a new web-based information portal for the lunar science and exploration community. This new website provides access to everything “lunar” from the earliest Apollo-era documents to the most recent lunar research reports.
The site is designed for a broad range of users, including exploration architects, lunar scientists, students, and the general public. Information is organized under several specific categories: (1) Lunar Mission Summaries; (2) Apollo-Era Documents; (3) Lunar Samples; (4) Lunar Images; (5) Lunar Surface; (6) Lunar Meteorites; (7) Exploration Strategies; (8) Constellation Hardware; (9) Landing Site Studies; (10) Computational Tools; and (11) Educational Products.
Data can also be accessed through a new LPI Lunar Search Engine, which provides links to both USRA-LPI documents and information at other lunar-related sites.
This is a living web-based system. As the exploration initiative grows, the content of this portal will expand appropriately, providing a one-stop source of information.
Highlights of the website include a new Lunar Orbiter Photo Gallery, with new views of over 2600 Lunar Orbiter images. This photo gallery greatly expands the 675-plate Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon.
Another new feature is a set of computational tools, the first of which allows users to calculate the sizes of craters produced on the lunar surface as a function of impact parameters.
We invite you to visit the new lunar website and continue to access it as the content grows and the lunar exploration initiative moves forward.
| Dr. David Kring Visiting Scientist for the Lunar Exploration Initiative Lunar and Planetary Institute |
Dr. Stephen Mackwell Director Lunar and Planetary Institute |
Last updated January 30, 2008
