FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The speech by President Bush in January 2004 paved the way for renewed exploration of the moon, the only extraterrestrial body actually visited by humans. The moon forms the foundation to a bold vision for using the moon to go to Mars and beyond. However, there is also a widely held perception that we have “done the moon” with the six manned Apollo landers and the three Soviet robotic Luna landers, resulting in the return of samples from nine different locations.

 The spring 2007 Barringer Lecture will give an overview of what we learned from the Apollo and Luna missions as well as what these mission did not tell us. It will also note the differences between this new era of lunar exploration and that of the Apollo/Luna era and point out moon-Mars linkages as well as the opportunities for exciting new science that can be conducted on our only natural satellite.

The lecture will be held at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 12, in Giffels Auditorium in Old Main.  Admission is free and open to all members of the university community and the public. Refreshments will be available after the talk. 

Professor Clive R. Neal from the University of Notre Dame will deliver the spring 2007 semester Barringer Lecture, titled “The Moon: Inspiring the World 40 Years After Apollo.” The lecture is part of the Barringer Lecture Series, which is sponsored by the Barringer Crater Co. Neal was educated in the United Kingdom, receiving his bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Leicester in 1982, and his doctorate in geochemistry from the University of Leeds in 1986. From 1986 to 1990 he was a post-doctoral research scholar at the University of Tennessee, where he first had the opportunity to work on moon rocks. He joined the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in 1990 and holds the rank of associate professor in the department of civil engineering and geological sciences. Neal is currently the chair of the Lunar Sample Allocation Subcommittee of NASA’s Curation and Analysis Planning Team for Extraterrestrial Materials and is also the chair of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group. He also sits on the Planetary Science Subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council.

Visit the Center for Space and Planetary Sciences online at http://spacecenter.uark.edu.