Astrogeology is the study of planetary surfaces by all applicable geologic means. Astro in this sense refers not to self-luminous stars as it usually does in English — for these have no geology — but rather to celestial bodies in general as astro or astre do in the romance languages. As in the original Greek 
geo refers here to land, ground or soil and not only to the planet Earth (Ronca, 1965). Astrogeology also includes investigations of meteorites found on Earth and the craters made by their impacts. Close synonyms include the rarely used’ space geology’, the awkward ‘extraterrestrial geology’ and the now commonly used ‘planetary geology’ in its usual extension from true planets to satellites and asteroids. ‘Planetology’ is a broader term that includes astronomic and atmospheric disciplines.
In 1876 the Russian philosopher V.V. Lesevich coined the term astro-geology, assuming it would be based on meteoritics and telescopic spectroscopy (Milton, 1969). This prior mention was not...
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Bibliography
Milton, D. J. (1969) Astrogeology in the 19th century. Geotimes, 14(6), 22.
Ronca, L. B. (1965) Selenology vs geology of the Moon etc. Geotimes 9(9), 13.
Wilhelms, D. E. (1990) Geologic mapping, in Planetary Mapping (eds R. Greeley and R. M. Batson). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 208–60.
Wilhelms, D. E. (1993) To a Rocky Moon: A Geologist's History of Lunar Exploration. Tucson: University of Arizona.
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Wilhelms, D.E. (1997). Astrogeology . In: Encyclopedia of Planetary Science. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4520-4_28
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