Google earth launched in the year 2005 was a great success. It might me banned in some countries due to security reasons but the uses of the program are beyond imagination. Google recently teamed up with scientists at the NASA Ames Research Center to bring you this collection of lunar maps and charts through recently launched tool named Google Moon. How ever their is no desktop client announced for this program and one can see the images of moon surface like Apollo mission through Google moon home page.
There are currently four different types of data you can get from Google moon such as:-
- Visible – A mosaic of images taken by the Clementine mission. This is a black-and-white version of what you would see if you were in orbit around the moon. This composite imagery was prepared by the USGS.
- Elevation – A lunar terrain map generated by the USGS in conjunction with the The Unified Lunar Control Network 2005, and shaded using an airbrushed shaded relief map. This map is color-coded by altitude, so you can use the color key at the lower left to estimate elevations.
- Apollo – A collection of placemarks that tell the story of the Apollo missions that landed on the moon. This includes stories, quotes, images, panoramas, audio clips, and links to videos of the astronauts’ adventures on the lunar surface.
- Charts – A collection of geological and topographic charts of various regions of the moon.
The data of google moon are very much near to accurate. The google said they will be integrating the programe with google earth shortly.
