NASA camera captures hi-res Moon imagery

Moon has been among the elusive mysteries mankind has had to face. While he dreams of setting up fancy builds there, he knows it'll get tough, since finer details about the surface of the moon, for starters still remain unknown. NASA, reportedly has achieved a breakthrough in this respect. According to a post on NASA's official website, the science team aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have released a map of the moon, called the Global Lunar DTM 100 m topographic model (GLD100). Even before you think of passing this on, NASA claims that this near-global topographic map of the moon captures this celestial satellite in the highest ever resolution possible. The map below from Arizona State University in Tempe depicts the surface shape of the moon and covers the entire area of the moon, well almost! 

A glimpse of what NASA's cameras captured

The topographic map is in a pixel scale of approximately 100 meters, roughly 328 feet. To know what this measurement exactly means imagine two football fields placed side-by-side and you have the measurement of one pixel. NASA has pressed its LRO Wide Angle Camera and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) instrument in this mission to capture these high-resolution images of the moon. NASA acquired the data required to structure the map from LRO’s WAC, which is part of the LROC imaging system. 

This WAC system is small enough to fit into one's palm. Each month, the WAC maps the entire area of the moon. What one sees above is not what moon looks like all time, since several rocks on the moon reflect light differently at different times and the WAC maps these very changes.