Lunar Topography

If you are sending a spacecraft to the moon, you will be interested in lunar topography. A new function in the Spacecraft Control Toolbox lets you superimpose a height map onto any sphere.

The function RSHMoon.m gives you the Clementine spacecraft topographic data using a spherical harmonic expansion of the rangefinder data.

A new function, PlanetWithTerrain.m, lets you superimpose this data onto a sphere.

Not too exciting! The function allows you to exaggerate the terrain. A terrain scale factor of 10 is more fun.

A close up.

This entry was posted in Aerospace, Toolboxes and tagged , , by Michael Paluszek. Bookmark the permalink.

About Michael Paluszek

Michael Paluszek is President of Princeton Satellite Systems. He graduated from MIT with a degree in electrical engineering in 1976 and followed that with an Engineer's degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1979. He worked at MIT for a year as a research engineer then worked at Draper Laboratory for 6 years on GN&C for human space missions. He worked at GE Astro Space from 1986 to 1992 on a variety of satellite projects including GPS IIR, Inmarsat 3 and Mars Observer. In 1992 he founded Princeton Satellite Systems.

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