The Journey of Lunokhod 1

• published: 01 Dec 2014
• views: 34

The video shows the journey of the Lunokhod-1 on the lunar surface. The unmanned interplanetary mission Luna 17 was launched to the Moon on 10 November 1970. The spacecraft successfully landed in the Sea of Rains on 17 November 1970 and the first automatic lunar rover Lunokhod-1 was deployed to the surface. During the operation (until Sept 1971) Lunokhod-1 sent to the Earth about 200 lunar panoramas and approximately 25,000 navigation images. Lunokhod-1 was detected on Lunar Reconaissance (LRO) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) images in March 2010. The digitized route is based on the true path of the Lunokhod-1 recognized on high-resolution LRO NAC images of the Moon. The traverse was identified and digitized manually at MExLab (MIIGAiK Extraterrestrial Laboratory, http://mexlab.miigaik.ru/eng/). A detailed model of the rover Lunokhod-1 was created at MExLab in 3Ds Max™ based on published parameters and description of its construction. The NAC Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and ortho image, which were used for lunar surface modeling, were provided by DLR. The animation was created in Scanex Image Processor™. Lunokhod is shown in real scale w.r.t. the landscape. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 312377 ProViDE.