The Lunar Prospector was co-developed by NASA Ames Research Center and Lockheed Martin, and was launched on January 6th, 1998. lts mission is to search for water ice and various elements in the Moon's surface, map its magnetic and gravity fields, and detect volcanic activity. For the first time, the World Wide Web is being used to graphically display near-real-time data from a planetary exploration mis:;ion to the global public. Science data from the craft's instruments, as well as engineering

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... ata for the spacecra-'t subsystems, are continuously displayed in time-varying XY plots. The craft's current location is displayed relative to the whole Moon, and as an off-craft obserw:r would see in the reference frame of the craft, with the lunar terrain scrolling underneath. These features are implemented as Java applets. Analyzed data (element and mass distribution) is presented as 3D lunar maps using VRML and Javascript. During the development [,hase, implementations of the Java Virtual Machine were just beginning to mature enough to adequately accommodate our target featureset; incomplete and varying implementations were the biggest bottleneck to ( ur ideal of ubiquitous browser access. Bottlenecks not s_ithstanding, the reaction from the Internet communit ¢ was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. LUNAR PROSPECT()R MISSION OVERVIEW The primary focus of the Apollo missions was to demonstrate the feasibility of technologies for successfully sending people and rock samples to and from the Moon. Most of the scientific datz collected was concen-