2.3 Missions to the Moon

David A. Rothery Teach Yourself Planets, Chapter 6, pp. 66-75, Hodder Education, 2000, 2003.

Copyright © David Rothery

The Moon was the first extraterrestrial target for space missions. Probes have been directed towards it since almost the very dawn of the space age (see below), and it was the main focus of the 1960s-1970s 'space race' between the USA and the then Soviet Union. In the end, only NASA attempted to put people on the Moon, and the six successful Apollo landings brought back a total of 382 kg of lunar rocks. These samples, together with 0.3 kg collected from other sites by unmanned Soviet sample return missions, are what has enabled us to calibrate the cratering timescale and were immensely important in developing our current level of understanding of the Moon's origin and history.

The budget for the Apollo programme was terminated in 1972, after which there was little further effort in lunar exploration until 1994 when the Clementine probe went into lunar orbit and collected a wealth of previously unknown information about the topography, crustal thickness, and variations in crustal composition across the whole lunar globe (Plate 2 [image can be found at: nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/ice/ice_moon.html]). This was followed in 1998 by another orbiter, Lunar Prospector, which provided even more insights and discoveries, such as the existence of ice dispersed within the regolith at both poles. The European Space Agency and Japan each plan lunar missions for the early years of the twenty-first century.