Recent Exploration of the Moon: Science from Lunar Missions Since 2006

Abstract

Exploration of the Moon has been a goal of humankind for millennia, and in recent decades enormous advances in lunar knowledge have resulted from orbital, landed, robotic, and human exploration and sample return (Spudis 2001; National Research Council 2007; Jaumann et al. 2012; Crawford and Joy 2014; Lunar Exploration Analysis Group 2016a). The Moon still retains the marks of human footprints, and these and other artifacts can now be seen with amazing clarity in images returned from the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Cameras (LROC; Robinson et al. 2010). The six U.S. Apollo missions...