LROC Stereo Observations

McEwen, and Mark Robinson. Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, MS 245-3, Moffett Field, CA, USA ([email protected]), United States Geological Survey, Ohio State University, The University of Arizona, and Arizona State University The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) [1, 2] will obtain two types of multiple overlapping coverage to enable derivation of high-resolution terrain models of the lunar surface. LROC has two Narrow Angle Cameras (NACs), and they work together to provide a wider (in the cross-track direction) field of view for each observation. They do not view the surface at different emission angles like the Terrain Cameras on SELENE [3] or the Terrain Mapping Cameras on Chandrayaan1 [4]. In order to derive dense topographic information from LROC images, multiple observations on different orbits are required, similar to stereo observations from the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) or the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (LRO’s) orbit precesses (is not Sun-synchronous), and the same target can be viewed at different solar azimuth and incidence angles providing the opportunity to acquire ‘photometric stereo’ observations in addition to traditional ‘geometric stereo’ data.