July 15, 2025, TUCSON, Ariz. – The United Nations General Assembly agreed in 2021 to dub July 20 International Moon Day, which celebrates the anniversary of the first landing by humans on the Moon on July 20, 1969 as part of the Apollo 11 lunar mission.
The theme for 2025 is “One Moon, One vision, One future,” according to the Moon Village Association, an early advocate for the Moon Day designation. The Moon serves as both a literal and symbolic destination, an aspiration that transcends borders and unites humanity in the pursuit of knowledge, progress and shared destiny. This theme focuses not only on technological achievements but also the collaboration and unity essential to the future of exploration, according to the association.
The Planetary Science Institute is home to many lunar experts. Some are available for interviews ahead of International Moon Day:
Senior Scientist Emeritus William Hartmann – along with Senior Scientist Don Davis – was the first to successfully argue the Moon formed from the remnants of a collision between a proto-Earth and a Mars-sized object. Hartmann is also a renowned space artist, author and advocate for the idea that science has no borders. As a graduate student at the University of Arizona, Hartmann also created a system for measuring ages of planetary surfaces from densities of meteoroid impact craters on those surfaces. Four years before Apollo 11 returned lunar samples, he successfully predicted an age of 3.6 billion years for them.
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Senior Scientist Roger Clark most recently identified adsorbed water and hydroxyl on the Moon, critical information for future missions. He did this using an algorithm he developed for imaging spectroscopy that allows users to quickly map mineral and chemical data. This system, dubbed Tetracorder, is an example of how space science can be used for the betterment of life on Earth. For example, Tetracorder was employed to assess damage done in the 2001 World Trade Center attack and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill by using NASA aircraft data.
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Senior Scientist Georgiana “George” Kramer works to understand the lunar environment and how humans can utilize its resources to enable a safe, sustained and productive human presence on the Moon.
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Senior Scientist Norbert Schorghofer studies lunar polar volatiles, specifically where and why water ice is found at some places on the Moon and not at others. He makes maps of where water ice ought to be based on certain theories and studies processes that move molecules between the subsurface and the extremely tenuous atmosphere, called an exosphere. Water, and other substances, like carbon, are quite rare on the Moon, yet important for sustained presence on the lunar surface.
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Senior Scientist R. Aileen Yingst is the principal investigator on the Heimdall, a NASA-funded camera system for the Blue Ghost 3 commercial lander built by Firefly Aerospace. It will return the highest resolution images of the lunar regolith yet obtained, as well as video of the landing plume. This information will be crucial for the safety of future landings. Yingst is also an expert in lunar rocks and geologic processes.
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Associate Research Scientist Lior Rubanenko is a co-investigator on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter studying the link between the Moon’s topography, solar radiation and temperature, as well as the stability of ice within cold traps, which are extreme thermal environments that preserve water and cometary organics for billions of years. Please note: Lior is currently in Europe through the end of the month and working 9 hours ahead of MST.
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THE PLANETARY SCIENCE INSTITUTE
The Planetary Science Institute is a private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation dedicated to Solar System exploration. It is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, where it was founded in 1972.
PSI scientists are involved in numerous NASA and international missions, the study of Mars and other planets, the Moon, asteroids, comets, interplanetary dust, impact physics, the origin of the Solar System, extra-solar planet formation, dynamics, the rise of life, and other areas of research. They conduct fieldwork on all continents around the world. They are also actively involved in science education and public outreach through school programs, children’s books, popular science books and art.
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