Construction of a virtual lunar environment platform

Many of the world's powerful and wealthy nations, including China, have devoted both large amounts of funding and considerable promotion to lunar research and exploration. The launch of Chinese Chang'e-1 satellite and the construction of the scientific observation data platform created a favourable opportunity for research into the lunar geometrical, physical and chemical environment. Based on this background, a Wide Area Network (WAN) based virtual lunar environment was constructed for observation data sharing and further exploration. The systematic architecture and framework were introduced and then strategies of mass data (e.g. lunar digital elevation model, lunar digital orthophoto map and typical thematic lunar data) organisation, integration, management and scheduling were then set up to achieve the 3D visualisation of typical lunar geomorphic features. Furthermore, the integration method of 3D lunar data and the process model of impact craters were studied; thus, the whole lunar and celestial collision process could be dynamically simulated. The results indicate that the WAN-based virtual lunar platform can be used effectively for public information sharing, scientific exploration and further to promote the development of deep space exploration in China.