Friday, May 31, 2024

Shape-from-shading

Brown University have published a topograph method. This is being touted for topologies on our MunMoon.

Recall that Apollo 11 nearly failed on account the Kerbals hadn't swept the boulders off the lander's way in time. The experience made an impression on the computer-scientists of the day. 1970s-era programmers made a whole educational(?) game-genre of landing craft on various planets. Although, yes, by the time we TRS-80 kidz got to the arcades, such games were on their way out (because we already had them at home, we supposed).

In our day we've seen a number of unmanned missions land upside down or sideways. Our maps still don't always suffice, especially in the high latitudes. Even with higher bandwidth and pinpointing than available in 1969, the Moon's sheer distance plus lightspeed imposes a latency which men in a lander don't suffer.

The technique should also help in mapping Deimos obviously, and asteroids.

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