Preface

There is a new Moon. Many of the most dramatic recent discoveries in planetary science are lunar. They transform our understanding of the Moon and lunar exploration’s prospects for exciting work there. Yet in many minds the Moon is an old story. NASA sent a dozen men to its surface in 1969–1972, and most people do not remember those events personally. Only in the past few years has lunar exploration accelerated again, and many, including policy makers deciding about the space program, do not realize how rapidly our knowledge of the Moon is changing.

This ignorance is unfortunate, since from 2004 to 2010 we were headed to the Moon but changed our minds. Some of these recent discoveries about the Moon might have changed our minds back again. By “our” in this case I refer to the United States, since many other nations’ space programs still see the Moon as an essential objective.