1. Evaluate primary crustal components and their distribution across the highlands.

A wide range of fundamental geologic processes occurs on the Moon, and each is associated with certain minerals. Identifying the character and diversity of minerals on the Moon in a geologic context will enable scientists to deduce the evolution of the lunar crust.

From the lunar samples retrieved by the U.S. Apollo missions and the Soviet Luna missions, and from remote sensing by the Clementine and Lunar Prospector spacecraft, we understand many of the building blocks of the primitive lunar crust. M³ will go much further in helping scientists to determine the abundance, distribution, and composition of minerals and the relationship of rock types to one another, and to deduce fundamental information about how the crust evolved in the first few hundred million years of the Moon's existence.