Location

You start next to the Apollo 17 lunar module, in the Taurus-Littrow valley (20.19° N, 30.77° E). The last crewed Moon landing touched down here in December 1972. Nobody has been back since.

Real terrain

• 4 × 4 km around the lander: NASA LRO stereo terrain at 2 m detail.
• 20 × 20 km of the surrounding mountains: 10 m detail.
• The ground image is an LRO photo at 1 m per pixel, with the original shadows removed.
• Beyond 20 km the terrain is generated, with crater sizes following the real lunar distribution.
• From high above you see the whole Moon, mapped with LRO laser heights and surface brightness.

True scale and physics

• One metre in the game is one metre on the Moon. The horizon is about 2.6 km away, just as for a person standing there.
• Gravity is 1.62 m/s², one sixth of Earth's. Jumps, bullets and debris all fall by it.
• There is no air: the flag does not wave and dust flies in clean arcs.
• Earth hangs about 54° above the horizon at its real size, where the astronauts saw it.

Added for the game

A few things are not on the real site: a 1.6 km crater north of the lander, an observation tower, a light dust haze, and a distant quasar in the sky in place of the Sun. The light still comes from the Sun's direction in the orbiter photo, so the shadows match the real ones.