Astrogeology Science Center
Maps
The Astrogeology Science Center's mission includes producing planetary maps and cartographic products which reveal topography, geology, topology, image mosaics and more, all made available to the international scientific community and the general public as a national resource. A selection of our more prominant products are listed here.
To search for more maps visit: Astropedia Search
MRCTR Products
The USGS Astrogeology Mapping, Remote-sensing, Cartography, Technology, and Research (MRCTR, pronounced "Mercator") GIS Lab provides web-based resources aimed at the planetary research community. The lab supports Geographic Information Systems (GIS) graphical, statistical, and spatial tools for analyses of planetary data, including the distribution of planetary GIS tutorials, tools, programs...
Mercury MESSENGER Global Mosaic
This mosaic represents the best geodetic map of Mercury's surface to date. MESSENGER's three flybys alone provide 90.90% of the data in the global mosaic (see Table above). Although MESSENGER went in to safe mode during the third flyby, the approach imaging was acquired and contributes ~6.82% additional coverage from earlier versions. Only the poles remain to be imaged, some of which...
Lunar Kaguya Multiband Imager Mosaics
This page introduces the Kaguya Multiband Imager derived spectral and derived mineral maps by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the University of Hawaii. The mosaics were created from topographically-corrected MI reflectance data acquired by the JAXA SELENE/Kaguya mission (see Ohtake et al., 2013) from the Kaguya Archive MI MAP processing level version 2 (MI MAP_02) products.
Moon Mineralogy Mapper Geometric Data Restoration
This project focused on geometric restoration of hyperspectral imagery from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3 or M3) instrument that flew as a guest instrument on the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-1 (Ch1) spacecraft (e.g., Goswami and Annadurai, 2009; Pieters et al., 2009; Boardman et al., 2011; Green et al., 2011). The primary objective of this work is to geometrically...
Moon Clementine NIR Global Map
The Clementine near-infrared (NIR) images have been made available in two near-global (70° N to 70° S) reduced-resolution mosaics. The two versions include a standard calibrated and empirically calibrated multi-spectral (6-band) ISIS cube at 500 m/pixel spatial resolution.
New Horizon Global Mosaics
New Horizons launched on Jan. 19, 2006 as part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program. The spacecraft will help scientists back on Earth study the surface and atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto, its moons and objects in the Kuiper belt—a region of our solar system beyond Neptune containing tens of thousands of objects. The USGS Astrogeology Science Center is committed to NASA’s New Horizons mission.
Moon Apollo Image Processing
In the early 1970s, specialized cameras onboard the Command Modules of the last three Apollo missions (15, 16, 17) photographed nearly 25% of the Moon in stunning detail. Today, scientists from Flagstaff’s U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona State University, and NASA are working together to reconstruct the lunar surface from these nearly 50-year-old photographs.
Mercury MESSENGER Global Digital Elevation Model
From the USGS press release:
The first topographic map of Mercury was released by the U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona State University, Carnegie Institute of Washington, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and NASA. This high-resolution map provides the first comprehensive view of Mercury’s entire surface, illustrating the planet’s craters, volcanoes and tectonic landforms...
Mars THEMIS-Derived Global Thermal Inertia Mosaic
This product is a global thermal inertia mosaic of Mars generated from high-resolution Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) nighttime infrared images (Christensen et al., 2004; Fergason et al., 2006a) that allows the identification, assessment, and global correlation of martian surface materials. The higher spatial resolution of THEMIS data (100 m per pixel), relative to Thermal Emission...
Moon Kaguya TC Global Mosaic
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched "KAGUYA (SELENE)" to obtain scientific data of the lunar origin and evolution and to develop the technology for the future lunar exploration. With permission from JAXA, researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Astrogeology Science Center have compiled and are releasing multiple near-global mosaics derived from data acquired by the...
Mars Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), Preparing for Controlled Mosaics
In 2003-2005, the USGS worked under the guidance of NASA's Mars Critical Data Products Initiative to conduct research on how controlled large area or global 2001 Mars Odyssey THEMIS IR image mosaics could be generated. The products listed here represent a sampling of the significant data files generated during that research.
Night IR Mosaics
The objective of this work is to assemble and cartographically control Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS; Christensen et al. 2004) daytime infrared (IR) and nighttime IR images. In a cartographically controlled mosaic, individual images are registered to one another so that all feature boundaries align. This intermediate mosaic (a “semi-controlled” mosaic) is then registered to a known...