In recent years we have witnessed renewed interest in missions to the Moon. In addition to the United States and Russia, who dominated the exploration of the Moon during the first two decades of the Space Age, there are now many new players in the game, including the European Space Agency, Japan, China, and India. While recent missions continue to add much to our knowledge about the Moon, only fifty years ago such voyages required the mastery of cutting-edge technology and frequently ended in disappointing failure.

During the opening years of the Space Age, NASA struggled to get probes to the Moon, initially with programs it had inherited from the military (see “The Pioneer lunar orbiters: a forgotten failure”, The Space Review, December 13, 2010). Out...