China publishes world's first high-definition lunar geologic atlas, 21 Apr

Since 2012, Ouyang Ziyuan and Liu Jianzhong have led a team of scientists and cartographers from relevant research institutions in compiling this atlas. With a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the origin and evolution of the moon, the team compiled the atlas based on scientific exploration data gained from China's Chang'e lunar exploration program and other research results from both Chinese and international missions, Liu said.
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"The world has witnessed significant progress in the field of lunar exploration and scientific research over the past decades, which has greatly improved our understanding of the moon. However, the lunar geologic maps published during the Apollo era have not been changed for about half a century, and are still being used for lunar geological research. With the improvements of lunar geologic studies, those old maps can no longer meet the needs of future scientific research and lunar exploration," said Liu Jianzhong, a senior researcher from the Institute of Geochemistry, CAS.
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This atlas set has been integrated into the digital lunar cloud platform [database] built by Chinese scientists, and will serve lunar scientific research, science education, as well as landing site selection, lunar resource exploration and path planning for China's future lunar exploration projects, Liu said.

He mentioned that China's upcoming Chang'e-6 mission [May 2024] is expected to collect samples in the Apollo Basin within the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon, which means materials ejected from ancient terrain may be collected in the process. "Our map can provide a macroscopic geologic background to improve the purpose and efficiency of the sample research," Liu explained.

The compilation of this map was an immense task, which required the organization and cooperation of many well-informed researchers over many years to be able to achieve a consistent and complete result, commented Gregory Michael, a senior scientist from the Free University of Berlin in Germany.