Event type:
Lecture, Hybrid
Organised by:
Geological Society Events, Public Lectures 2025
Venue:
Hybrid In person at Burlington House and Virtual via Zoom

Event details
This lecture will be comprised of two parts.
To begin, we will play a recording of the Geological Society's 28th William Smith Lecture, titled 'Apollo and the Geology of the Moon', originally presented by Dr Harrison Schmitt in December 1973. Dr Schmitt was part of the three-person crew of Apollo 17 that launched on 7 December 1972, returning to Earth on 19 December. Apollo 17 was the final of NASA's crewed lunar landing missions and therefore Schmitt remains the first and only geologist ever to walk on the Moon.
Once the recording has concluded, Dr Giulia Magnarini will give a talk titled 'From Apollo to Artemis: paving the way to the next giant leap in lunar exploration.' Although more than 50 years have passed since the last Apollo mission to the Moon, the scientific legacy of the Apollo programme long lives to present days, providing ground truth to a new understanding of the Moon that opened thanks to more recent, robotic orbital and ground observations.
Moreover, thanks to the NASA ANGSA program, unopened Apollo 17 samples were analysed using new analytical instrumentation previously unavailable during the Apollo Program, revealing new information about lunar history and evolution. The ANGSA initiative also operates as generational handoff from Apollo to Artemis, preparing lunar scientists and sample curators to inform future lunar exploration through the Artemis program.
Speaker
Dr Harrison Schmitt is an astronaut and geologist who was part of the crew for the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon in December 1972. Schmitt is the only scientist and geologist to have walked on the Moon and has been actively involved in lunar research on an ongoing basis, and is involved with NASA's Artemis Program.
Giulia is a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, where she works on surface processes in the Solar System. Her current research concerns the use of secondary impact craters as stratigraphic markers to constrain the timing of geological processes on Mars, the Moon, Mercury, and Europa.
She also continues studying long runout landslides across the Solar System, the topic of her PhD at UCL, for which she combines remote sensing techniques, field work, and laboratory experiments.
Giulia is also involved with the NASA Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) program, studying a newly opened Apollo 17 sample that was collected from a lunar landslide deposit during the Apollo 17 mission.
Programme
17:30–18:00: Guests arrive for the Public Lecture
18:00–19:00: Talk takes place (including Q&A)
19:00–20:00: Drinks reception
20:00: Event ends
Date, time and location
This Public Lecture will take place on Tuesday 18 February at 18:00 (GMT).
This is a hybrid event, which can be attended in person at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, or online via Zoom.
Registration
This lecture is free to attend. However, we are a registered charity (number: 210161) and we would welcome donations. If you would like to donate, you can do so here.
You can register for both in-person and virtual attendance here.
If you wish to join our mailing list, please email conference@geolsoc.org.uk