The NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) Central Office operates out of NASA Ames Research Center, supporting NLSI teams and international partners, as well as the lunar science community at large.

NLSI Central supports its selected domestic teams in several ways, including administering the funds for these competitively selected teams. As a virtual institute, the NLSI Central Office brings unique skills and collaborative technologies to its teams, as well as training, for enhancing collaborative research between geographically disparate teams. NLSI Central convenes the Executive Council of the organization, which guides the Institute’s activities, particularly in regard to the lunar science community as a whole and in response to NASA’s needs.

International partnerships are fostered by the NLSI via development and finalization of formal partnerships. The Central Office manages the creation of these partnerships and facilitates collaborations between partners and the rest of the NLSI community. Additionally, NLSI Central leads international lunar science meetings and participates in international lunar science community endeavors.

NLSI Central also interfaces with lunar science programmatic elements by providing leadership for community input to surveys such as the Planetary Decadal, working with the Lunar Exploration & Analysis Group (LEAG) efforts with the lunar science community, and being an interface between the lunar commercial space sector and the lunar science community, including NASA. NLSI also hosts an array of lunar science focus groups and seminars. The Director’s Seminar Series and the Lunar Commerce Seminar Series, are archived online and available to anyone.

In addition to supporting the general lunar science community, NLSI Central provides a core for the lunar Education/ Public Outreach (EPO) community, supporting both the NLSI teams’ EPO efforts and broader lunar-themed collaborations such as Moon Zoo and International Observe the Moon Night. NLSI Central also is a source and repository for lunar science education materials available to anyone. For higher education, NLSI Central provides funding for undergraduate internships and runs a competitive lunar post-doctoral program that places young researchers in NLSI’s teams.

If you are interested in collaborating with the NASA Lunar Science Institute teams or Central Office, please contact one of our staff members.

NLSI Science Teams

  • New rock type on the lunar farside found by NLSI Team at Brown/MIT

    2010JE003727(2)

    The farside of the Moon has always been a mystery and is only accessible by spacecraft. New compositional information from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) onboard Chandrayaan‐1 has identified a suite of highly unusual rock types exposed at small areas within the farside Moscoviense Basin. M3 is a state‐of‐the art visible and near‐infrared imaging spectrometer that was a guest instrument on Chandrayaan‐1, the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) first mission to the Moon. The instrument is designed to measure accurately the diagnostic mineral absorption bands of solar radiation reflected from the lunar surface.

Lunar Science Forum

Inspiration Room

NLSI Inspiration Room



Did you know?

The last human visitor left the Moon in December 1972.

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