Apollo Landing Site Terrain Survey

experimentNo. 0061categoryRides & explorationrecordingpendingdataCC BY 4.0

The fly, enlarged to about 7 m, traverses stereo-derived Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter terrain at Apollo landing sites, stopping at published positions of the lunar module, surface experiments and nearby craters.

Setup

• Two configured sites: Apollo 11 Tranquility Base (six survey stops) and Apollo 15 Hadley–Apennine (five survey stops, including the Hadley Rille rim and floor).
• Terrain comes from LROC NAC stereo elevation models and aligned orthoimages; one scene unit equals 10 terrain metres, with no vertical exaggeration.
• Guided survey tour or manual traverse with W/A/S/D, turn and 10 m advance controls; speeds of 2, 5, 10, 25 or 50 m/s.
• Landing site, Follow fly, Surface eye, Survey and Topography cameras, with optional labels and schematic EVA path ribbons.
• A comparison control switches to the separate Apollo studio-set scene; that studio setting is modeled without a documented source.

Measurement

• Optional live neural input submits the canonical eye image's 32 luminance columns to the fixed connectome model; weights are not updated.
• Navigation and gait are pre-programmed; measured spikes do not steer the survey.
• Packages save the site and traverse settings, not a learned skill.

Limitations

• Hardware models are procedural approximations placed at positions from the LROC anthropogenic-object table (Wagner et al. 2017); the Apollo 11 TV camera and flag are reconstructed from ALSJ distances.
• Amber ribbons are schematic EVA paths, not digitized footprints.
• The orthoimage carries the illumination of the orbital image, not of the Apollo surface activities.
• The fly is enlarged for legibility; the Apollo 15 lunar module heading is approximate, not measured.

Sources

• LROC NAC DTM, Apollo 15 (Arizona State University)