Lunar directions · Live
Plan a route anywhere on the Moon.
Terrain-aware directions on foot, by rover, or with VIPER's profile. Distance, travel time, slopes, and sunlight along the way, built on NASA's open terrain data.
Night at Apollo 15 until Nov 17. Leaving at sunrise: 13.5 km by Apollo rover, 2 h 26 min, 32 min in terrain shadow.
Example route
Demo route, terrain mode
Apollo 15 to Mons Hadley Delta
Solid: the terrain route for the Apollo rover. Dashed: the direct line.
- Terrain route, Apollo rover
- 13.5 km
- Direct line
- 12.6 km
| Vehicle | Route | Time, est. | Max slope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo rover | 13.5 km | 2 h 26 min | 20.1° |
| On foot | 14.1 km | 6 h 48 min | 19.1° |
| VIPER | 24.8 km | 2 d 20 h | 11.9° |
It is night at Apollo 15. Sunrise in about 14 days, at 2026-11-17 10:31 UTC. See the horizon from Apollo 15. Leaving at that sunrise by Apollo rover, you would pass into terrain shadow after about 3 min, at 0.4 km, and back into sunlight after about 35 min, at 4.5 km. As of 2026-11-03 10:51 UTC.
Terrain resolution: about 474 m, the LOLA terrain tier around the Apollo landing sites; the model does not include boulders or other surface hazards. How the routing works
Open this route on the map →Horizon view
See the skyline from anywhere on the Moon.
Pick any point and NavLunar traces the terrain in every direction to draw the horizon you would see standing there, with named peaks, how far away they are, and where the Sun sits.
The Sun is below the horizon: 17.1° under it at azimuth 277°. At 2026-11-03 10:51:41 UTC.
Terrain resolution: about 474 m here, about 1.9 km at the farthest samples; no boulders or other surface hazards. How the horizon is computed
Light and time
Move the clock and watch the day and night line cross the Moon. At the poles, see which rims catch sunlight most often and where permanently shadowed regions sit, mapped from published LRO data.
The picture: the south polar region, 360 km across, with the Illumination layer (the share of 2026 each point is lit) and the PSR outlines, as the south pole view draws them. Polar mosaic: NASA Trek, LRO LROC WAC (NASA/GSFC/ASU). Illumination: computed from NASA LRO LOLA terrain by the horizon method of Mazarico et al. (2011). PSR outlines: the LROC PDS release (Brown et al. 2022), permanently shadowed regions of 5 square km and more.
Lunar Grid Reference System
Every place on the Moon,
one address away.
The Lunar Grid Reference System is the official NASA and USGS grid for the Moon: 25 km cells over the whole surface, down to 1 m references. NavLunar draws it on an interactive map and gives every cell, all 9,086 IAU-named features and 57 mission sites a permanent link, with the engine tested against the USGS reference implementation.
Worked example
Apollo 11, Tranquility Base, at 0.67416, 23.47314, is
26N EF J04 V42
- 26
- Zone. Lunar Transverse Mercator zone 26, 8° of longitude wide: 20°E to 28°E.
- N
- Latitude band. 8° of latitude: 0°N to 8°N.
- EF
- 25-km grid area. The 25 km by 25 km grid area: column E, row F. Cell 26NEF has its own page.
- J04
- Easting inside the grid area. Artemis Condensed Coordinates: the 1-km grid column J, then the 100-m and 10-m grid digits, 04: 9,040 m east of the grid area's lower left corner, to 10 m.
- V42
- Northing inside the grid area. The 1-km grid row V, then the 100-m and 10-m grid digits, 42: 20,423 m north of that corner, to 10 m.
The full LGRS coordinate to 1 m is 26NEF0904020423; the last six characters, spoken in the field, are the Artemis Condensed Coordinates. Convert your own
More to explore
- MissionsEvery landing site on the grid
- Named routes15 routes with sources, direct and over the terrain
- ConverterLatitude and longitude to grid codes and back
- The Moon on your desk (AR)NASA's Moon model in augmented reality, 35 cm across
- Tonight on the MoonThe phase, the subsolar point and the day and night line, live