1990, Jan.: Muses A (also called Hiten ) - first Japanese flyby of the Moon, to collect engineering data; released small orbiter, Haroromo, which apparently did nothing but prove they could do it (F, O)

1990, Dec.: Galileo - gravity-assist flyby of probe enroute to Jupiter; medium resolution multi-spectral imaging of western nearside and adjacent farside of Moon First mspacecraft mapping of Moon with modern instruments. (F)

1990: Rükl, A: Atlas of the Moon - The latest and best of Rükl’s many atlases and maps of the Moon. This lone cartographer has kept alive lunar mapping when everyone else had given up. The book was out of print for a number of years and had become a desperately sought collector’s item, being offered for a few hundred dollars. Ironically, German and French versions are available for about $15! A revised and updated version (pictured here) was published in 2004 by Sky & Telescope and is a delight to use.

1991: GH Heiken, DT Vaniman & BM French (editors): The Lunar Sourcebook: A User’s Guide to the Moon - An engineer’s handbook, invaluable, thorough and boring. In 2005 became available as a CD.

1991: H Hill: A Portfolio of Lunar Drawings: Wonderfully evocative drawings that could have been made 100 years ago - a labor of love, with few pretensions of being scientific. Used prices of $22 and $25 in 1997, and $32 in 1998.

1992, Dec.: Galileo - second gravity-assist flyby, xxxxx medium resolution images of xxxx

1993: PD Spudis: The Geology of Multi-Ring Impact Basins - The geology and origins of the most important landforms on the Moon and planets; concentrates on lunar basins.

1993: DE Wilhelms: To a Rocky Moon: A Geologist’s History of Lunar Exploration - a scientific and personal perspective of how, why and where we went to the Moon, with a strong USGS perspective. An excellent read! Now available in paperback. Hardback version sold as a used book in early 1998 for $38. More.

1994, Jan: Clementine - military star wars technology test, resulting in ~2,000,000 medium and high resolution, multi-spectral imaging and topo mapping of the entire Moon. The second modern data for the Moon - Galileo flybys were first but did not obtain nearly as much data! The entire Moon was imaged with 80 m resolution and tiny strips at 13 m. Because of the spacecraft’s orbit the sun angle varied from very low at the poles to full Moon views near the equator. Clementine images can most easily be accessed through the USGS Map-A-Planet webpage.(O)

1994: RD Launius: Apollo - A Retrospective Analysis. the NASA History Office has placed this entire book online.

1994: A. Chaikin: A Man on the Moon - the best account of the astronauts’ perspective on going to the Moon; an excellent complement to the geologist’s view in Wilhelms’ To a Rocky Moon. Time-Life 3 volume version (date?) includes hundreds of Apollo photos, and can be purchased on eBay for about $25.

1994: N Johnson: The Soviet Reach for the Moon - the saddest story of space exploration; after early astonishing successes, the Soviet Moon program failed horribly, leaving behind the rusting hulks of the giant N-1 Moon Rockets which now serve as carports, shower buildings, gazebos and playground equipment.

1996: PD Spudis: The Once and Future Moon - The best popular summary of modern understanding of the Moon and an impatient analysis of our many failures to return humans to the Moon.

1997: RB Kelsey: Welcome to the Moon - A small (112 p) book written by an enthusiastic lunar observer to help others find interesting things to see on the Moon. $12 new.

1997?: Blue Moon - a joint project by the US Air Force, Lawrence Livermore Natl. Lab and the Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales to launch a 55 kg spacecraft into an elliptical orbit around the Moon. Principal science goals were to be measurement of magnetic fields and low resolution optical imaging. The spacecraft was not launched when planned - what is its fate?

Jan. 1998: Lunar Prospector - low cost spacecraft, global mapping of radioactivity, elemental composition of surface, discovered polar water ice and looking for radon gas (O) A dream come true for Principal Investigator Alan Binder who worked more than a decade to convince someone, anyone, to fly a lunar orbiter. A footnote: Prospector carried one ounce of the ashes of lunar scientist Gene Shoemaker, who died in a car crash in the fall of 1997. At the end of the mission the spacecraft was crashed into an always shadowed polar crater to look for possible vaporization of ice. Nothing was detected, but Shoemaker - who wanted to be an Apollo astronaut - will rest forever on his beloved Moon. In February, 1998, Navajo Indians protested that the human remains will desecrate the sacred Moon. NASA apologized, but stated that orbital mechanics are unreversible. (from Nature, Feb 1998).

1999: Lunar-A - proposed Japanese high resolution mapping orbiter with three penetrators to detect moonquakes and measure heatflow (O). Delayed and descoped because of various problems, most recently the realization that the planned orbit would keep the probe within the Moon’s shadow so much that solar cells could not provide adequate power. See Space News, June 15-24, 1998. UPDATE: In January 2007, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) recommended cancelling the mission because the penetrators do not work and the main spacecraft, built 10 years ago, has fallen into disrepair and would be too expesnive to repair. How sad…

1999: Ewen A. Whitaker: Mapping and Naming of the Moon. The only history of the giving of designations to lunar craters; written by the world’s expert.