Introduction
The Moon provides a unique window into the early evolution of terrestrial planets, which is inaccessible on other planets due to the obliteration of their early surfaces by plate tectonics and long-term erosion. Since its formation at ~4.5 Ma, the Moon has recorded and preserved the entire history of planet differentiation, volcanic processes, and exterior impact cratering processes. Estimations of the early lunar impact flux and magmatism have profound implications to the more complex evolution of the solar system, Earth-Moon system, and other terrestrial planets.
Since space age, our knowledge of the lunar geologic evolution has mainly come from returned samples, meteorites, in situ measurements, and remote-sensing observations. The Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972 revolutionized the lunar and planetary science by virtue of the invaluable returned samples, seismic data, and heat flux measurements (Crawford et al. 2014). Fundamental hypotheses, including the giant...
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This work was supported by NSFC41674098 to NZ.
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Ding, M., Zhang, N. (2018). Early Geologic History of the Moon. In: Cudnik, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Lunar Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05546-6_8-1
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