Dr. Binder is Director of the Lunar Research Institute in Tucson, AZ. He was Principal Investigator for the Lunar Prospector mission and was responsible for the Alpha Particle Spectrometer instrument on board the spacecraft. Dr. Binder’s main research interests center around the origin, petrological and structural evolution of the Moon, as well as its possible economic utilization. Dr. Binder has 35 years of experience in the fields of planetary astronomy and planetary geosciences. He was a Principal Investigator on the 1976 Viking Mars Lander Camera Team.
For 10 years, Dr. Binder both taught and conducted lunar research in Germany and served as an advisor to the European Space Agency in its studies of a lunar polar orbiter mission. Dr. Binder earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1961 from Northern Illinois University, and in 1967, earned a doctorate in geology and lunar and planetary science from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. He has authored or co-authored some 60 scientific papers, mainly in the areas of lunar and Mars geology, geochemistry, petrology and geophysics.
