A review of lunar sample studies and their application to studies of the terrestrial planets

During the last half decade, hundreds of scientists from many countries have been studying the samples, photographs, and instrumental data returned from the moon by the Apollo and Luna programs. These studies have placed significant limits on chemical, petrologic, and physical parameters, on the time of many events, and on the rate of many processes and are giving greater insight into the natural processes that formed the moon and shaped its surface. Increasingly, it is being recognized that very similar processes governed the origin and evolution of planetary bodies throughout the solar system. Spacecraft have extended our sensors to all the terrestrial planets, and the insights gained from Apollo dominate our interpretation of the photographic and instrumental data returned from these bodies.