What elevation data exists for the Moon?
The foundation is LOLA, the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been measuring the Moon since 2009. The US Geological Survey publishes a global elevation model built from it: 118 metres per pixel at the equator (256 pixels per degree), pole to pole, drawn from more than 6.5 billion measurements taken between July 2009 and July 2013. It is a single 8 GB file.
Finer products cover parts of the Moon. SLDEM2015 merges LOLA with stereo elevation from the Terrain Camera on Japan's SELENE (Kaguya) orbiter, at 512 pixels per degree, about 59 metres at the equator, with a typical vertical accuracy of 3 to 4 metres, but only between 60° north and 60° south. Around the south pole, NASA Goddard publishes LOLA mosaics at 5 metres per pixel for latitudes 87° to 90° south.
Finer is not always more useful. On a 200 mm print of a region 200 km wide, one 118 m pixel is already about 0.12 mm across, and the DEMto3D plugin's manual recommends keeping points at least 0.2 mm apart. The higher-resolution products earn their size when the region is small: a single crater wall, or a site near the pole.
The farside, the half that never faces Earth, is covered as completely as the nearside. The measurements come from an orbiter rather than a telescope: LRO maps the Moon from a polar orbit, and its altimeter measures whatever ground passes beneath it, whether Earth can see that ground or not.
How does elevation data become something you can print?
An elevation model is a grid of numbers in which each pixel holds a height rather than a brightness. To print it, software turns the grid into a surface of triangles, adds side walls and a flat base so that it becomes a closed solid, and scales it to millimetres. The result is saved as a mesh file, which a slicer cuts into layers and turns into instructions for the printer.
Two formats matter. STL describes surface geometry only: triangles, with no colour and no units, so a terrain arrives as one uncoloured shape whose scale the slicer has to assume. 3MF can carry colour, several materials and several separate parts in one file, so a part can arrive in the slicer already coloured.
Whatever produces the file, the slicer needs the same things from it: a closed solid, the right physical size, and a flat face to stand on. Everything after that, from layer height to infill to which filament goes where, is decided in the slicer.
How much should you exaggerate the terrain?
Usually more than you would expect. OrbitStudio's own guidance is that dramatic craters such as Tycho print well at 1x, while mare plains such as the Apollo 11 site need 3x to 5x before the relief is visible in a print. The reason is proportion: the Moon's highest and lowest points are close to 20 kilometres apart in height, while a single crater can be 85 or 185 kilometres across.
A worked example. Say a 200 mm print covers a region 200 km wide. One millimetre on the model is then one kilometre on the Moon, and at true scale that holds for height too. Tycho's 4.7 km depth becomes 4.7 mm, which reads clearly. A ridge 100 metres high becomes 0.1 mm, thinner than a single 0.12 mm layer, so the slicer cannot draw it. At 4x it becomes 0.4 mm: just over three layers.
Shrink the whole Moon, 3,475 km across, to a 200 mm globe and its entire range of heights comes to just over 1 mm. Exaggeration is simply a multiplier on every height. It changes nothing horizontally, so craters keep their positions and widths; what it gives up is true proportion, in exchange for relief you can see and feel.
What are the ways to do it?
There are three practical routes, and they differ mainly in how much finishing is left to you. The first is NASA's Moon Trek, a browser portal built at JPL, with nothing to buy or install. Its Generate 3D Print File tool asks you to draw a rectangle on the map, check the bounding box and submit. You choose STL or OBJ, a resolution and a height exaggeration from 1 to 10; an OBJ can also carry an image texture.
In its standard map view, Moon Trek cuts the file from a global LOLA layer at 256 pixels per degree, the same sampling as the USGS model. NASA describes the output as a file for making a physical model of a surface feature, and that is what you get: the terrain inside your rectangle. A frame, separate colours or puzzle pieces are for you to add in other software.
The second is QGIS, free and open-source GIS software, with the DEMto3D plugin. You open the USGS elevation model, then set a rectangular extent, the spacing between points, the model size or scale, an exaggeration factor and a base, 2 mm by default. The plugin can divide the model into equal parts across and down, and writes a binary STL: one solid, one colour. Its manual does not cover colours or interlocking pieces.
The third is OrbitStudio, which runs in the browser and builds the model for you, with no CAD and no mesh repair. You pick any region of the Moon or one of 34 built-in landmarks, choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament, and set the exaggeration, size, piece count, base thickness, frame and text. The download is STL files and colour-ready 3MF files for Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer, with the terrain and the frame as separate files. Generating and previewing are free without an account, a free account adds puzzle slicing and frame text, and downloading uses one credit from a pass.
- Moon Trek: free; STL or OBJ of the rectangle you draw; exaggeration 1x to 10x; frame, colours and pieces are yours to add.
- QGIS with DEMto3D: free; you set extent, spacing, scale, exaggeration and base; one single-colour STL.
- OrbitStudio: puzzle or ornament in a circle, square or hexagon, with a frame; STL and pre-coloured 3MF; one credit per download, from a pass.
How should you slice and print it?
Flat on its base, terrain up, at a fine layer height. A model made from a height map has one surface height at every point, so nothing overhangs, and standing on its base it needs no supports. The layer height sets the smallest step in height the print can show, which is why it and the exaggeration are best chosen together.
For more than one colour, a multi-material unit does the swapping. With Bambu Lab's AMS, Bambu Studio lets you bind a filament to each object or part, then maps the project's colours to the AMS slots by colour and material when you send the print, so a 3MF whose parts are already coloured mostly needs checking. On a printer with one spool, a colour change at a chosen layer does it by hand: the printer pauses, you swap filament, and everything above that height prints in the new colour.
The settings below are the ones OrbitStudio recommends for its own models. Printers, profiles and materials vary, so treat them as a starting point, and look through the sliced preview layer by layer, checking the geometry and wall thickness, before you start a print.
- Layer height: 0.12 mm to 0.16 mm.
- Top surface walls: set “Only one wall on top surfaces” to Not applied.
- Infill: 15% gyroid for puzzles, 10% gyroid for solid ornaments.
- Filament: matte PLA hides layer lines; silk PLA highlights the curves of the terrain.
What will you not see in a print?
Anything smaller than the data. The Apollo 11 descent stage, left behind at Tranquility Base, is about four metres across; the global elevation model samples the ground every 118 metres, so the lander is roughly a thirtieth of one pixel. You print the ground at the coordinates where the hardware stands, not the hardware.
Anything that is colour rather than shape. Tycho's rays, the pale streaks that reach a third of the way around the Moon, are a difference in brightness, not in height, so they leave no relief; what prints is the bowl, the terraced walls and the central peak. And any feature that ends up lower than one layer after exaggeration disappears into the flat.
Where should you start?
With a region that has depth to spare. Tycho, 85 km across and 4.7 km deep, is dramatic at true scale, and Copernicus, 93 km across with terraced walls, rarely needs much exaggeration. On the farside, Tsiolkovskiy puts a central peak over 3,400 m high on a flat floor 185 km wide, and prints as a single clear landmark.
Apollo 11 is the opposite: flat ground, printed for the place rather than the landscape, at 3x to 5x. The other five landings are on the Apollo landing sites page. Or open the generator, pick any region, and turn it around in 3D, which is free and needs no account, before deciding anything.