USGS Releases First Full Moon Geological Map

Have you ever wondered what kind of rocks make up those shiny, dark spots on the moon? Well, the USGS has just released a new licensed map to help explain the 4.5 billion year history of our closest neighbor in space.

For the first time, the entire lunar surface has been fully mapped and uniformly classified by USGS scientists, in collaboration with NASA and the Lunar Planetary Institute.

The lunar map, called the “Unified Geological Map of the Moon,” will serve as the definitive blueprint for the moon’s surface geology for future human missions and will be invaluable to the international scientific community, educators, and the general public. The digital map is available online now and shows the moon’s geology in incredible detail (1: 5,000,000 scale).

“The moon has always fascinated people and when we might return,” said current USGS director and former NASA astronaut Jim Reilly. “So it is wonderful to see USGS create a resource that can help NASA with its planning for future missions.”

To create the new digital map, the scientists used information from six regional Apollo-era maps along with updated information from recent satellite missions to the moon. Existing historical maps were redesigned to align with modern data sets, thus preserving previous observations and interpretations. Along with the merger of new and old data, the USGS researchers also developed a unified description of the stratigraphy, or rock layers, of the moon. This solved problems from previous maps where rock names, descriptions, and ages were sometimes inconsistent.

“This map is the culmination of a decades-long project,” said Corey Fortezzo, geologist and lead author of the USGS. “It provides vital information for new scientific studies by connecting exploration of specific sites on the moon with the rest of the lunar surface.”

The elevation data for the equatorial region of the moon comes from stereo observations collected by the terrain camera on the recent SELENE (Engineering and Selenology Explorer) mission led by JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The topography for the north and south poles was supplemented by data from the NASA Lunar Orbiter laser altimeter.

For more details about the map, read the summary or download it directly from the Unified Geological Map of the Moon website.