China's Chang'E-3 (CE-3) spacecraft touched down on the northern Mare Imbrium of the lunar nearside (340.49°E, 44.12°N), a region not directly sampled before. We report preliminary results with data from the CE-3 lander descent camera and from the Yutu rover's camera and penetrating radar. After the landing at a young 450-meter crater rim, the Yutu rover drove 114 meters on the ejecta blanket and photographed the rough surface and the excavated boulders. The boulder contains a substantial amount of crystals, which are most likely plagioclase and/or other mafic silicate mineral aggregates similar to terrestrial dolerite. The Lunar Penetrating Radar detection and integrated geological interpretation have identified more than nine subsurface layers, suggesting that this region has experienced complex geological processes since the Imbrian and is compositionally distinct from the Apollo and Luna landing sites.

A novel method to fabricate micromodels with varying depth (2.5-D) was developed, which allows more realistic investigation on flow in natural 3-D porous media.

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An international team of researchers gathered, with the support of the International Space Science Institute (ISSI), (1) to review seismological investigations of the lunar interior from the Apollo-era and up until the present and (2) to reassess our level of knowledge and uncertainty on the interior structure of the Moon. A companion paper (Nunn et al. in Space Sci. Rev., submitted) reviews and discusses the Apollo lunar seismic data with the aim of creating a new reference seismic data set for future use by the community. In this study, we first review information pertinent to the interior of the Moon that has become B R.F. Garcia

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