LOLA RDR Query tool - data since 2014

[K. Macdonald]

Hi all - 

I've been looking to pull data from the LOLA RDR Query tool and I just want to make sure I'm collecting data correctly. My understanding is that between July 2009 and July 2013, more than 6.5 billion LOLA measurements were collected (https://astrogeology.usgs.gov/search/details/Moon/LRO/LOLA/Lunar_LRO_LOLA_Global_LDEM_118m_Mar2014/cub), while running a LOLA RDR Query search on the full Moon with a minimum UTC time bound of 2014-01-01 returns only 432,978 points. Does this seem correct? Many large regions of the Moon appear to not have had LOLA data collected since 2013. I understand that there have been shifts in the lifecycle of the instrument and how it has been used, I just want to be sure that I am not missing something in my data collection process.

Thank you!

[Dan Scholes]

Hi There,

I am one of the developers who maintains the ODE website. I ran the same query in the ODE LOLA RDR Query tool, and I received the same response. I believe it is reasonable. Remember, you are just limiting the output to one day. The tool is not setup very well for global coverage searches, but it can be done for narrow time windows. If you wish to query 2014-2019, I would suggest doing a region of interest. That is more of the objective of the query tool.

The limited areas of coverage for 2014 and later is expected. The orbiter was in a different orbit and the instrument issues you mentioned. To see the different in coverage for later years, you can use the ODE map search page to filter LRO LOLA RDR coverage to specific time ranges.  Link to map search interface:  https://ode.rsl.wustl.edu/moon/indexMapSearch.aspx

Map interface limited to LOLA RDR (image mapSearch1.jpg)

LOLA RDR filtered to 2014 observations. (image mapSearch2.jpg)

Thanks,

Dan