Mare Nectaris - Mare Imbrium. 1:2,500,000. Pictorial relief printing.

important pre-apollo lunar map

First printing of a monumental and important lunar relief map produced by the US Army Map Service in the run-up to the Apollo program, incorporating all six future landing sites. Rare in commerce, with no other copies in auction records.

Mare Nectaris - Mare Imbrium was compiled during 1961, the same year that Kennedy famously announced to Congress that the US would land a man on the Moon. It was the first Earthside stereographic map of any part of the Moon, highlighting the central portion of the visible half of the lunar surface, and was based on photographs taken by the Paris Observatory between 1896 and 1907. The map was available in two versions: gradient tint and shaded relief, as here (Surveying and Mapping, United States Superintendent of Documents, 1963). The names of the features were derived from the standard source Named Lunar Formations by Mary Blagg and K. Müller, and the verso is printed with a complete list of lunar places. A small, three-dimensional plastic version at 1:500,000 was produced the year before, and is somewhat more available.

The Apollo sites (not yet designated as such at the time of printing) are the Sea of Tranquility, the Sea of Storms (Oceanus Procellarum) near Lansberg Crater, Fra Mauro near the Bonpland and Perry craters, the Appenine Mountains near Haldey Rille, the Descartes Crater, and the Taurus Mountains-Littrow Crater area.

Colour map, (54.5 x 40.5 in), glazed and framed; some wear and loss at the edges and to two round spots at the bottom of the lower text portion repaired with paper, with slight loss of some text, horizontal creases from folding, a few light spots; very good condition.