Abstract
Mapping landforms on the Moon is of great interest and importance for
future human settlements and resources exploration. One of the first
steps is to map the topography and investigate their shape and geometry
in great detail and resolution, which would provide the first conditions
for assessing their suitability for future on-site analysis. However,
data from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) provide low
resolution elevation maps in comparison to the size of detailed
geological features. To improve resolution, we developed an inverse
method to upscale topographic maps to a higher resolution using
photographic data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC).
The method, which exploits the relation between topographic gradients
and degrees of shading of incoming sunlight, shows an improvement from
~60 metres per pixel to 0.9 metres per pixel, bringing
it to the same resolution as the optical images from LROC. Our method
can detect craters as small as ~3 metres of diameter
and, if illumination from several angles are available, is potentially a
way to remove shades from complex features such as caves. It is also
possible to estimate the error of the model due to uncertainties in the
albedo.