The Exploration of the Moon: From Antiquities to the Present

摘要

In 2019, humanity celebrated the 50th anniversary of the historic landing of Apollo 11 on the surface of the Moon. Though the Apollo missions have contributed greatly to our scientific understanding of the Moon, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact that the exploration of the Moon has had a very long history, and in fact continues up to the present day. In this talk, I will give an overview of some of the key events in lunar exploration, from the first naked-eye observations by early astronomers, to missions that are currently operational in orbit and on the surface.

报告人简介

Mark Wieczorek has been at the Laboratoire Lagrange as a member of the research group Théories et Observations en Planétologie since 2017. Prior to this, he was the leader of the Planetary and Space Sciences group at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, and from 2011-2015, he was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets. In addition to his scientific activities, he is the lead developer of the SHTOOLS software package that is used for analyzing global data expressed in spherical harmonics. His scientific research focuses on deciphering the interior structure and geologic evolution of the terrestrial planets and moons. As a geophysicist, he mostly uses planetary topography, gravity, and magnetic field data that have been acquired from orbiting spacecraft, but he also relies on remote sensing data and impact crater formation models. He has worked with several lunar missions, including the orbiting SMART-1 and Chandrayaan-1 X-ray fluorescence spectrometers, and NASA’s lunar gravity mapping mission GRAIL. Currently, he is a co-investigator of NASA’s upcoming geophysical mission to Mars, Insight, and the laser altimeters on ESA’s BepiColombo mission to Mercury and JUICE mission to Ganymede.