Bear Down 100: Mapping the moon
University of Arizona professor Gerard Kuiper served as principal investigator for the NASA Ranger program and as an experimenter on the NASA Surveyor program. He helped identify landing sites on the Moon for the Apollo program.
As part of the 100th anniversary of our motto, "Bear Down," the University of Arizona is looking back at several of the most remarkable moments and accomplishments in the university’s illustrious history, with an eye toward the "Bear Down" moments of the future.
By the time President John F. Kennedy announced in 1961 that the United States would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade, a small group of University of Arizona researchers were already studying the lunar surface. Their work would quickly become integral to the success of future robotic and Apollo missions.
The moon maps created by Gerard P. Kuiper – widely considered the father of modern-day planetary science – not only helped NASA understand the lunar surface but also played a key role in selecting landing sites for Apollo 12 and other missions. But how did Kuiper and his colleagues manage to map a moon landing site? Through talent, dedication and a commitment to achieving what others thought impossible – the "Bear Down" spirit.
Ewen Whitaker (left) and Gerard Kuiper helped map the moon and built the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory into a leader in the field of planetary science.
Kuiper's Wildcat journey began in 1960, when he moved to Tucson and founded the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the U of A. Three years later, the University of Arizona Press published the Rectified Lunar Atlas, which included the first images of undistorted features on the near side of the moon. The images were designed to replicate the perspective of an astronaut flying overhead. Kuiper's team created that perspective by stitching together lunar photographs captured by Southern Arizona-based telescopes onto a globe and then photographing the model to eliminate the distortion that normally occurs when looking through a telescope.
Consolidated Lunar Atlas
In 1967, Kuiper's Consolidated Lunar Atlas was published by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory for use by the U.S. Air Force. This atlas was comprised of the highest resolution images taken from the ground, most of which were taken using the NASA-funded 61-inch telescope nestled atop Mount Bigelow in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson. The telescope is now managed by the university's Steward Observatory and bears Kuiper's name.
Kuiper and his team created the Consolidated Lunar Atlas by carefully focusing the telescope on the moon and systematically snapping thousands of film photos along the moon's terminator, the boundary between sunlight and darkness. At the terminator, sunlight hits the moon at a low angle, allowing the scientists to capture subtle variations in the lunar topography.
Kuiper became principal investigator of NASA's robotic Ranger missions, which mapped the moon ahead of the unmanned Surveyor missions. The success of the Surveyor landings reassured astronauts they could follow their robotic forbearers and step foot on the moon – and ultimately led to the pinpoint landing procedures demonstrated by Apollo 12 in 1969, the second manned mission on the moon.
Since Apollo, the U of A has imaged the surface of Mars in great detail using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The university also led the team that imaged the surface of Saturn's moon Titan from under the clouds with the Cassini-Huygens probe, and led the OSIRIS-REx mission to collect material from an asteroid.
Explore more Bear Down 100 moments at Arizona.edu/BearDown.
