Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter: 7 Billion Point Cloud of the Moon

The lunar surface is mapped by nearly 7 billion individual laser altimeter returns from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA). NASA organized this data into 15-degree by 15-degree tiles, compressed into the Cloud Optimized Point Cloud (COPC) format and cataloged in a Spatio-Temporal Asset Catalog (STAC) collection. The data is in latitude, longitude, and radius coordinates using the IAU 2015 30100 projection, covering the -180 to 180 longitude domain.

Use Cases

• Generate high-resolution lunar terrain models based on the point cloud elevation data.
• Analyze surface roughness and crater morphology based on the dense point cloud returns.
• Train machine learning models for planetary feature detection using the geospatial point data.
• Perform spatial queries and subset extraction based on the STAC catalog and tile organization.

Strengths

• Contains nearly 7 billion individual data points, providing extremely dense coverage.
• Data is organized into a modern, queryable STAC collection and the COPC file format.
• Uses a standardized IAU 2015 projection for consistent spatial reference.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
• Row count per tile is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific tasks.

Provenance

Source

NASA, sourced from the Planetary Data System (PDS) LOLA Reduced Data Record.

Collection Method

Individual altimetry returns were scraped from the PDS LOLA RDR Query Tool, V2.0, then tiled, compressed, and cataloged.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated: unknown

Geography

Global coverage of the lunar surface.