Between the early 1960’s and early 1970’s, a group of young and enthusiastic geoscientists and support personnel working for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Branch of Astrogeology in Menlo Park California, Flagstaff, Arizona, and elsewhere, were destined to play a major role in one of the most remarkable events and most significant achievements in the history of mankind-the manned Apollo expeditions to the Moon. July 20th of 2009 will mark the 40th anniversary of the day the world stood still while everyone watched astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the surface of the Moon while Mike Collins orbited above them during the historic Apollo 11 mission to the Sea of Tranquillity. The history of the geologic mapping of the Moon, and the U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Astrogeology’s pure research and outstanding support of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) unmanned lunar spacecraft missions, during the Apollo Era have been well-documented by Don Wilhelms in his two outstanding publications The Geologic History of the Moon (Wilhelms, 1987) and To a Rocky Moon (Wilhelms, 1993). Don, having spent his career with the Branch of Astrogeology in Menlo Park, California, directing the Survey’s lunar-geologic mapping activities, is the first to admit that these publications provide insufficient detail on the concurrent activities of the “Manned Lunar Exploration” group of the Branch of Astrogeology, which, based out of Flagstaff, Arizona (starting in mid-1963), became the Branch of Surface Planetary Exploration in 1967 (until the Branches recombined in May 1974). Therefore, the main objective of the present work is to fill that significant gap in the important documentation of Apollo history with regard to the participation of the U.S. Geological Survey.
