FOREWORD
Paul
D. Spudis
Lunar
and Planetary Institute
The Lunar Orbiter program was one of the most successful mission series ever flown. Designed to obtain high-resolution pictures to certify the safety of Apollo landing sites, the first three missions were so successful that the last two, Orbiters 4 and 5, were “released” for scientific mapping of the Moon. Lunar Orbiter 4 mapped the entire near side of the Moon at an average resolution of about 100 meters per line pair. Lunar Orbiter 5 filled in some gaps in Apollo site certification, but mostly obtained detailed, high-resolution images of a variety of scientific targets around the Moon. After 30 years, the Lunar Orbiter photographs remain the principal reference set of images for the scientific study of surface landforms on the Moon.
In the late 1960s, David
Bowker and Kenrick Hughes of NASA’s Langley Research Center, where the project
was run, assembled the best Lunar Orbiter images into an atlas covering both
near and far sides of the Moon. This 675-plate photographic atlas was published
by the U.S. Government Printing Office as NASA Special Publication 206 in
1971 and became an essential reference work to anyone interested in lunar
science. Any lunar feature could be accessed and examined merely by thumbing
through this book. “Bowker and Hughes,” as its aficionados referred to it,
became the standard reference book for a generation of lunar geologists and
mappers.
Publication by NASA (i.e.,
subsidized by the federal government) ensured that the book would have wide
distribution and would be relatively inexpensive. At one point, the Lunar
and Planetary Institute had so many surplus copies of the atlas that they
were given away at the annual Lunar Science Conferences of the 1970s. Some
of us in those days, attending as graduate students, packed away multiple
copies of this priceless treasure! However, since the depletion of LPI’s stock
of surplus atlases, the book has been out-of-print and difficult to find.
I recently searched the Internet for a used copy and found one. Asking price:
$400!!
I am thrilled and excited
that the classic “Bowker and Hughes” is now once again widely available, this
time in the even more convenient CD-ROM format. Now a new generation of lunar
students and friends can make acquaintance with the distant cratered landscapes
some of us love so well. Jeff and the technical crew at the LPI have done
both the planetary science community and the small but enthusiastic group
of lunar amateurs a great service by once again making this important reference
book widely available at an affordable price. Although we’ve had other missions
to the Moon, this collection of Lunar Orbiter photographs has never been surpassed
in terms of sheer photographic quality. And now, in a cleaned-up digital form,
they look better than ever.
Browse through the images on this disk and discover the beauty and wonder of our nearest neighbor in space. And start learning the geography of the Moon — it will be mankind’s first off-Earth home in the solar system.