In this recently released animation from NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center celebrating the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's 1,000th day in orbit around the Earth's only natural satellite, the moon's entire formation history has been compressed into under three minutes.
The moon's surface is often viewed as being static and unchanging. While this may be true from the perspective of we Earthlings down here, if you look at 4.5 billion years of lunar evolution, you find that the moon was actually pretty action packed! And helpfully, as the moon has no eroding atmosphere and no plate tectonics (unlike Earth), the surface features depicting the awesome violence of the early solar system are eternally etched into the moon's 'face.'
This is one of the most important scientific factors for any future manned mission to the moon: to "read" the lunar "open book." As the solar system evolved through its orbit around the galactic core, there is invaluable information etched deep into the moon's rock, not only providing information about the evolution of our own planet, but the evolution of our entire galaxy. It is akin to a cosmic photographic plate, exposed to the radiation and meteorite impacts for billions of years.
Forgetting the human compulsion to colonize other worlds, the science we could learn by a manned mission would surely be enough incentive to send geologists to the moon. Unfortunately, we'll probably be waiting for a long time until that becomes a reality.
