I’ve been working to generate a virtual or synthetic version of the moon that is geospatially accurate. I’m hoping it can be used to train astronauts and neural networks for a lunar landing. Currently I have 8kmx8km of the Apollo 17 landing site with 0.5m accuracy. Check out the project here: git@github.com:sanford87/MetaMoon.git
Any advice or critiques are definitely welcome. The next major goals are positioning the current area using the moon2000 coordinate system and Unreal Engine 4.27’s georeferencing tool. Next I’ll add in the rest of the moon’s geography at ~50m accuracy with the option to replace areas with higher resolution versions as those become available.
Remember that the moon isn’t flat.
Ue4 landscapes are.
You need to a special set of sphere distortion calculations to approximate the terrain in a geospacially realistic way.
In fact, it may be better to start from a sphere approximating the moon and work from there.
Not positive, but surely NASA has some kind of lunar standard distortion calculations for heightmap just like earth has ESRI standards.
In fact, since there’s mirrors on the moon, the spherical calculations are probably bound to be much more accurate today than what they used to be prior to the moon missions?
Becuse of the geosynchronous orbit, we never get to measure things on the other side though.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the dark side isn’t mapped at all.
You’re correct. I’m using the moon2000 coordinate system. The heightmaps used for the landscapes account for this. There is some distortion but <30m at the corners if you’re using a 8km section. Unreal’s georeferencing tools are pretty incredible and resolve almost all of the transforms you’d run into. Currently NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) can only resolve geography ~110m accuracy but there are a few “hot spots” that have received increased scrutiny because they might be landing spots for the Artemis missions.
