Google Moon Gets a Big Update
Written by Fraser Cain
When Google Moon was released last year, it was a bit of a joke. Google Earth, but for the Moon. Zoom in far enough and the familiar lunar craters were replaced with swiss cheese. The time for silliness is over, Google Moon has gotten an update, and they're making it a serious learning tool this time around. The website incorporates photographs from orbiters and the Apollo missions to let you zoom in and out, exploring the Moon.
Head over to Google Moon, and follow along. You can change the view between Charts, Apollo, Visible and Elevation. All of the Apollo landing sites are marked on the map, so you can click each one to get more information.
Zoom in all the way, and you don't see swiss cheese anymore. Instead you see the most detailed images available from NASA showing high resolution details about the landing sites. Each landing site has more than 10 additional detailed place markers, showing points of interest about the mission.
For example, click on the Apollo 16 mission, and the interface informs you there are 21 additional place markers. Click to zoom in, and you can see all the little markers. Click on any one and you'll see more details, such as interesting rocks, craters, and landing spacecraft. Some of the detailed views are just photographs, but others are panoramas that you can scroll around to see the landscape from the astronauts' point of view. Very cool!
There are also some landmarks with audio clips and video clips. All in all, the site feels like an educational CD-ROM.
And that's part of its problem - it's not really an atlas of the Moon, and more of a presentation of the Apollo missions. Many of those lunar craters have names. There are plenty more interesting features on the Moon than just the Apollo landing sites. I'd love to see some of that information incorporated as well. They could also bring in images from other spacecraft, like ESA's SMART-1 to provide better coverage in some areas.
My other concern is that it doesn't really work if you zoom all the way out. Instead of seeing a nice view of the whole Moon, there's a confusing set of repeating images showing the same portions of the Moon over and over again. Google Maps does the same thing with the Earth, but still, it should look like you're zooming into the Moon.
Anyway, enough of my review, check it out at http://www.google.com/moon
Original Source: NASA News Release
December 24th, 2007 at 11:21 am
How frustrating is it, though that you can't zoom in to see any evidence that people were there at all, no lunar buggies or paths that were created through the fine dust by their wheels etc. I was hoping that this would be the most fun thing, I mean we all like to zoom in on google earth to see our house and our car etc from directly above, why is there nothing at all!?!?!?!?
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Still think they actually landed?
January 16th, 2008 at 11:33 am
i want to see the REAL pictures of the moon… in detail, without any blurred, distorted, photographic anomalies…..NASA needs to get REAL!!!!!!!!
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:24 am
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March 12th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I don't think they will, they have to many blured disorted triangle building shapes that needs to be hide from public view. ITs a whole city up there if you really search "the moon bases". Its not hard not to find it, Nasa just don't want the truth be told.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Bring back the swiss cheese!