Chandrayaan-2's Terrain Mapping Camera has captured a three-dimensional (3D) view of a crater on the Moon. The imaged 3D view was posted by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Wednesday. The TMC-2 imaged the crater near Lindbergh. Terrain Mapping Camera-2 (TMC-2) is a follow-on of the TMC on-board Chandrayaan-1. TMC-2 provides images (0.4μm to 0.85μm) at 5m spatial resolution & stereo triplets (fore, nadir and aft views) from a 100 km orbit for preparing Digital Elevation model (DEM) of the complete lunar surface.
The triplet images from TMC-2 when processed into Digital Elevation Models, enable mapping of surface landform morphologies. These include:
- Craters (formed by impactors)
- Lava tubes (potential sites for future habitability)
- Rilles (furrows formed by lava channels or collapsed lava tubes)
- Dorsa or wrinkle ridges (formed mostly in Mare regions depicting cooling of and contraction of basaltic lava)
- Graben structures (depicts the structural dislocations on the lunar surface )
- Lunar Domes/ Cones (denoting localized vents of past volcanism on the Moon).
The derived information facilitates estimation of dimensions of above features and its comparison for reconstructing the morpho-structural framework, crater characterization to derive impact geometries, surface age determination through Crater Size –Frequency Distribution (CSFD) methods, Rheological analysis based on the derived morphometric parameters, Lunar reflectance estimation etc.
3D View of a wrinkle ridge near Dorsa Geikie
3D View of a crater near Lindbergh
DEM Generation from Terrain Mapping Camera-2
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