spacetoday.net: NASA releases new images of lunar south pole

Posted: Sat, Mar 1, 2008, 3:56 PM ET (2056 GMT)
Radar image of lunar south pole (NASA/JPL)

NASA this week released the highest resolution images to date of the south polar regions of the Moon, an area considered to the most likely location for a future human base. NASA used the Deep Space Network's antennas in Goldstone, California, to make radar images of the region, with a resolution of 20 meters per pixel. The images showed that the region is more rugged than earlier thought, and could pose more of a challenge for future robotic or manned landers. Previous images of the region, such as from the Clementine mission in the 1990s, had a resolution of about 1 kilometer. The imagery of the region will be greatly improved after the launch later this year of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft, which is capable of taking images of the surface at a resolution of 1 meter.