Planned radiometrically calibrated and geometrically corrected products of lunar high-resolution Terrain Camera on SELENE

Abstract

Surface relief maps have a significant role in the investigation of the solid planets. A 10 m resolution stereoscopic push-broom imager called the Terrain Camera (TC) will be installed on the Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE), a Japanese lunar polar orbiter to be launched in 2007, to acquire lunar global topographic data from which lunar relief maps will be produced. Appropriate radiometric calibration and geometric correction (RGC) processing is required to construct reliable surface maps. An RGC processing system has already been installed in the SELENE Operation and Analysis Center (SOAC) of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The main tasks of the RGC processing system for TC data are dark-level correction, flat-field correction, photometric calibration, conversion of radiance to reflectance, and map projection. The several TC RGC-processed products in a scene size are superimposed, mosaicked, and stored in the SELENE level-2 database (L2DB) system as a relief map product. Relief maps of the entire Moon are scheduled for completion 1 year after the end of the SELENE nominal mission. Since a global 10 m resolution lunar relief map has never been produced before, the maps from the TC data will be valuable for lunar sciences and future exploration.