The lengthy period since the Apollo landings limits present-day engineers attempting to draw from the experiences of veteran Apollo engineers and astronauts in the design of a new lunar lander. In order to circumvent these limitations, content analyses were performed on the voice transcripts of the Apollo lunar landing missions. The analyses highlighted numerous inefficiencies in the design of ...

Lunar meteorites provide a wider sampling of the lunar surface compared to the samples collected during the Apollo and Luna Missions. Apatite is the main hydroxyl-bearing (proxy for water) mineral in lunar samples, especially in basaltic rocks. Apatite is also amenable to in-situ U-Pb age dating studies. The ages of lunar basaltic meteorites also span over a larger range compared to basaltic sa...

Introduction: Lunar meteorites arguably provide a wider sampling of the lunar surface compared to the samples collected during the Apollo and Luna Missions. Apatite is the main hydroxyl-bearing (proxy for water) mineral in lunar samples, especially in basaltic rocks. The ages of lunar basaltic meteorites also span a larger range compared to basaltic samples collected during Apollo and Luna miss...

Preparations for lunar missions involve the extensive use of simulants of lunar surface materials. Since many planned operations engage the mechanical properties of the regolith, it is of utmost importance to assure that the simulants adequately represent the engineering properties of actual lunar materials. To address this critical issue, we are conducting an experimental and modeling effort t...

[This corrects the article on p. 1230 in vol. 6, PMID: 26793210.].

Magnetic studies of lunar rocks indicate that the Moon generated a core dynamo with surface field intensities of ~20 to 110 μT between at least 4.25 and 3.56 billion years ago (Ga). The field subsequently declined to <~4 μT by 3.19 Ga, but it has been unclear whether the dynamo had terminated by this time or just greatly weakened in intensity. We present analyses that demonstrate that the melt ...

Despite the major achievements in studying the Moon during the last quarter-century, our global knowledge is still patchy and incomplete. Although the Moon is so close, access has always been limited. Half of the Moon remained completely unknown until spacecraft could be sent around it. Even with the Apollo program and the Soviet and U.S. robotic lunar explorations, humans have directly explore...