Unveiling the face of the Moon: new views and future prospects

The Moon holds the key to unlocking the secrets of the origin and early evo lution of the inner Solar System, and as such is the most studied planetary body outside of the Earth. At the peak of lunar exploration in the 1960s a nd 1970s, a va;st amount of information was returned by both manned and unm anned spacecraft. Photographs, remote sensing data, even samples of lunar r ocks and soil arrived on Earth for analysis. These data proved to be a trea sure trove for scientists, and great advances were made in our understandin g of the Moon. Despite this, the Moon remained enigmatic, and for every que stion answered, many more were raised. The one thing we lacked above all else at the end of this period was a glob al dataset of any kind of the Moon, and it took over 20 3rears before new l unar missions remedied this. Data from these are now being analysed and onc e more we are advancing our knowledge of the Moon. These advances will cont inue into the new millennium with further unmanned missions designed to unr avel some of the Moon's most complex problems. Looking to the future, we ca n envisage the Moon becoming far more than just a rocky satellite of Earth. It has the potential to become a geological laboratory, astronomical obser vatory and maybe even home to the first human outpost away from the Earth. Perhaps this is science fiction at the moment, but we can be certain that w ithout extensive manned and unmanned exploration, the Moon will withhold it s secrets forever.