Introduction to the special section: New Views of the Moon, Part 3, The Nature and Evolution of the Moon From Surface to Core, a series of papers related to the lunar science initiative “New views of the Moon enabled by combined remotely sensed and lunar sample data sets”

Abstract

The series of 12 papers that follows this brief introduction is part of the “New Views of the Moon” initiative started by NASA's Curation and Analysis Planning Team for Extraterrestrial Materials (CAPTEM) in 1998 [cf. Jolliff and Ryder, 1998]. This initiative strives to integrate the various facets of lunar investigations, such as remotely sensed surface data (e.g., spectral reflectance, gamma‐ray, etc.), geophysics, sample analysis, and space weathering. The ensuing special section of 12 papers is the third that has been published in Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR)‐Planets as part of this lunar science initiative and is the result of topical sessions at the 31st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in 2000. The first, published in 2000 (JGR, 105 (E2), 4173–4368) [Jolliff, 2000], contained 11 papers as a result of the initial “New Views” workshop that was held in Houston in 1998 [Jolliff and Ryder, 1998].