Editing Galileo project (section)

===Lunar observations===
<gallery class="center" widths="220px" heights="220px">
File:Moon-galileo-color.jpg|[[Mare Orientale]] on the [[Moon]]|alt=The maria are large areas with less cratering
File:The Moon from Galileo - GPN-2000-000473.jpg|''Galileo'' shot of the [[lunar north pole]]|alt=The far side is cratered; maria on the near side
File:Moon Crescent - False Color Mosaic.jpg|[[False-color]] mosaic by ''Galileo'' showing [[Geology of the Moon|compositional variations]] of the Moon's surface |alt=refer to caption
</gallery>

En route to ''Galileo''{{'s}} second gravity-assist flyby of Earth, the spacecraft flew over the [[lunar north pole]] on December 8, 1992, at an altitude of {{convert|110,000|km|sp=us}}. The north pole had been photographed before, by ''[[Mariner 10]]'' in 1973, but ''Galileo''{{'s}} cameras, with their {{convert|1.1|km|sp=us}} per [[pixel]] imagery, provided new information about a region that still held some scientific mysteries. The infrared spectromer surveyed the surface minerals and revealed that the region was more minerallogically diverse than expected. There was evidence that the [[Moon]] had been volcanically active earlier than originally thought, and the spectrometer clearly distinguished different lava flows on the [[Mare Serenitatis]]. Areas where titanium-rich material had been blasted from vents, like the one sampled by [[Apollo 17]], showed up clearly.{{sfn|Harland|2000|pp=65–67}}