Washington Post – 50 years of data from old landings and satellite images helped create a surface blueprint. “In the year 2024, NASA plans to send astronauts 239,000 miles to the moon. It will be the first time since 1972 that humans have touched down on Earth’s only natural satellite. The mission will also include the first woman to travel to the moon. NASA will have a cool new tool to help it with this mission: the Unified Geologic Map of the Moon. This is a topographical map — that is, it shows physical features, such as the height of mountains and the depth of valleys. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) calls it the “definitive blueprint of the moon’s surface geology.” The USGS, which released the map in April, makes a lot of maps of Earth. It is also the “only institution in the world that creates standardized maps for surfaces that are not on Earth,” says USGS research geologist James Skinner. That includes Mars and other planets and moons in our solar system. The new moon map took more than 50 years to make. It started with six original maps collected from the Apollo missions to the moon in the 1960s and ’70s. The maps did a good job of showing the basic layout of the moon. New technology has made it possible to create an updated map and “turn it into information scientists can use,” says Skinner…”

The direct link to the map and the xml metadata is here.