The Apollo program was driven by the perceived national need to decisively demonstrate American technological prowess in the face of early Soviet space victories. Scientific lunar exploration was a secondary concern. In fact, some engineers saw lunar science as a distraction from the already daunting task of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.
The community of lunar scientists was small in May 1961, when President John F. Kennedy put the U.S. on the road to the moon. Nevertheless, lunar science had its energetic proponents. In early 1962, they saw to it that NASA's Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF) asked NASA's Office of Space Science (OSS) to outline an Apollo science program. OSS appointed NASA physicist Charles Sonett to head up an ad hocworking group, and OMSF provided it with a set of guidelines.
The group's 12 members and nine consultants included U.S. Geological Survey geologist (and aspiring moonwalker) Eugene Shoemaker, geophysicist Paul Lowman, astronomers Gerard Kuiper and Thomas Gold, and chemist Harold Urey. They circulated their July 1962 draft report at the National Academy of Science's 10-week Iowa City meeting (17 June-31 August 1962) and within NASA, receiving (they said) "general endorsement" for their recommendations.
The final version of Sonett's report, published in December 1963 and labeled "for internal NASA use only. . .not for release to the general public," became the first in a series of influential Apollo planning documents that called for ambitious scientific exploration of the moon. Its recommendations touched on many aspects of Apollo mission planning.