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New Views of Lunar Geoscience: An Introduction and Overview

Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Box 1846, Providence, Rhode Island, 02912, U.S.A. Harald_Hiesinger@Brown.edu, James_Head_III@Brown.edu

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	1. INTRODUCTION

 
Beyond the Earth, the Moon is the only planetary body for which we have samples from known locations. The analysis of these samples gives us "ground-truth" for numerous remote sensing studies of the physical and chemical properties of the Moon and they are invaluable for our fundamental understanding of lunar origin and evolution. Prior to the return of the Apollo 11 samples, the Moon was thought by many to be a primitive undifferentiated body (e.g., Urey 1966), a concept shattered by the data returned from the Apollo and Luna missions. Ever since, new data have helped to address some of our questions, but of course, they also produced new questions. In this chapter we provide a summary of knowledge about lunar geologic processes and we describe major scientific advancements of the last decade that are mainly related to the most recent lunar missions such as Galileo, Clementine, and Lunar Prospector.

1.1. The Moon in the planetary context
Compared to terrestrial planets, the Moon is unique in terms of its bulk density, its size, and its origin (Fig. 1.1a–c), all of which have profound effects on its thermal evolution and the formation of a secondary crust (Fig. 1.1d). Numerous planetary scientists considered the Moon as an endmember among the planetary bodies in our solar system because its lithosphere has been relatively cool, rigid, and intact throughout most of geological time (a "one-plate" planet), and its surface has not been affected by plate recycling, an atmosphere, water, or life. Therefore the Moon recorded and preserved evidence for geologic processes that were active over the last 4–4.5 b.y. and offers us the unique opportunity to look back into geologic times for which evidence on Earth has long been erased (Fig. 1.1c,d). Impact cratering, an exterior process, is considered the most important surface process on the Moon. . . . [Full Text of this Article]