Many folks would like to see us back on the Moon and developing its resources.

Showing posts with label Apollo 17. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apollo 17. Show all posts

Friday, December 14, 2012

On the 40th Anniversary of Apollo-17


Even if the motivating force was politics, science was done.
Hope we don't forget the folks that made it happen.
- LRK -

-----------------------

On the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 17

Forty years after the last human visitors departed the Moon aboard Apollo 17, space historian Andrew Chaikin talks about why we should return.

Hardly a day goes by when I don't think about the Apollo missions to the Moon, voyages that collectively have been called “mankind’s greatest adventure.” Today, 40 years after Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt left the last human footprints in lunar dust, I’m feeling a familiar sense of wistful nostalgia. I miss the Apollo adventure the way I miss my childhood.
snip

Andrew Chaikin is an award-winning science journalist, space historian, speaker, and author. Chaikin is best known as the author of A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, widely regarded as the definitive account of the Moon missions. For more videos, visit Chaikin's YouTube channel.
-----------------------


Lunar and Planetary Institute links.
- LRK -

-----------------------

Science Experiments

The Apollo 17 Scientific Instrument Module (SIM)The instrument layout within the SIM bay.
Left: The Apollo 17 Scientific Instrument Module (SIM). Right: The instrument layout within the SIM bay.
Orbital Experiments
In addition to their studies on the lunar surface, the Apollo 17 crew performed intensive studies of the Moon from lunar orbit. In addition to photography performed with handheld cameras in the Command Module, a series of experiments were carried in the Scientific Instrument Module on the Service Module.
The Metric and Panoramic cameras provided systematic photography of the lunar surface.
The Laser Altimeter measured the heights of lunar surface features
The S-Band Transponder Experiment measured regional variations in the Moon's gravitational acceleration.
The Apollo Lunar Sounder Experiment used radar to study the structure of the upper kilometer of the lunar crust.
The Ultraviolet Spectrometer Experiment studied the composition of the lunar atmosphere.
The Infrared Radiometer measured the cooling of the Moon's surface at night as a way to determine the physical properties of the lunar soil.
snip
-----------------------

Scientific American, July 1, 2010, article about new findings.
- LRK -

-----------------------
Getting the Lead out: New Look atApollo 17 Moon Sample Reveals Graphite Delivered by a Lunar Impactor
Nearly 40 years after the last manned moon mission, NASA's Apollo program is still producing new findings

Humans have not set foot on the moon since December 14, 1972, when astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt of the Apollo 17 mission departed the lunar surface to return home. Thankfully, Cernan and Schmitt, a trained geologist, collected 110 kilograms of lunar material—the largest-ever haul of moon rocks and soil—before heading for Earth.

That material is still yielding new insights into the moon's history, as evidenced by a paper in the July 2 issue of Science claiming the first solid evidence for graphite, the form of carbon commonly used as pencil lead, in a lunar sample.
snip
-----------------------

YouTube clip of Apollo 17.   About 10 minutes.
- LRK -

-----------------------

Apollo 17 Lunar Rover and Geological Findings.mp4

Uploaded on Mar 14, 2011
Apollo 17 was the 11th manned space mission in the NASA Apollo program. Launched at 12:33 a.m. EST on December 7, 1972, with a crew of Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 remains the most recent manned Moon landing and the most recent manned flight beyond low Earth orbit.

Apollo 17 was the sixth and final lunar landing mission of the Apollo program and was the first night launch of a U.S. human spaceflight.
snip
-----------------------

Images at ALSJ.
- LRK -

-----------------------

Apollo 17 Image Library

Figure Captions Copyright © 1995 by Eric M. Jones.
All rights reserved.
HTML Design by Brian Lawrence.
Last revised 10 October 2012.
snip
This Apollo 17 Image Library contains all of the pictures taken on the lunar surface by the astronauts together with pictures from pre-flight training and pictures of equipment and the flight hardware. High-resolution version of many of the lunar surface images are included. A source for both thumbnail and low -resolution versions of the lunar surface images is a website compiled by Paul Spudis and colleagues at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.
snip
-----------------------

Harrison H. Schmitt's website. 
- LRK -

-----------------------
http://americasuncommonsense.com/blog/who-is-harrison-h-schmitt/
Harrison Hagan Schmitt, a native of Silver City, NM, has the diverse experience of a geologist, pilot, astronaut, administrator, businessman, writer, and U. S. Senator. Schmitt received his B. S. from Caltech, studied as a Fulbright Scholar at Oslo, and attended graduate school at Harvard. Geological field studies in Norway formed the basis of his Ph.D. in 1964. As a civilian, Schmitt received Air Force jet pilot wings in 1965 and Navy helicopter wings in 1967, logging more than 2100 hours of flying time. Selected for the Scientist-Astronaut program in 1965, Schmitt organized the lunar science training for the Apollo Astronauts, represented the crews during the development of hardware and procedures for lunar surface exploration, and oversaw the final preparation of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Descent Stage. He served as Mission Scientist in support of the Apollo 11 mission. After training as back-up Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 15, Schmitt flew in space as Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 17 – the last Apollo mission to the moon. On December 11, 1972, he landed in the Valley of Taurus-Littrow as the only scientist and the last of 12 men to step on the Moon.
snip
-----------------------
Thanks for looking with me.
- LRK -
=============================================================
THE APOLLO PROGRAM
Apollo 17 Facts
Lunar Module:Challenger
Command and Service Module:America
Crew:Eugene A. Cernan, commander,
Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot
Harrison H. Schmitt, lunar module pilot
Launch:December 7, 1972
05:33:00 UT (12:33:00 a.m. EST)
Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A
Landing Site:Taurus-Littrow
(20.18N, 30.76E)
Landed on Moon:

December 11, 1972
19:54:57 UT (02:54:57 p.m. EST)

EVA duration:
22 hours 4 minutes
( EVA 1: 7 hr 12 min, EVA 2: 7 hr 37 min., EVA 3 ended at 05:40:56 GMT on December 14.)

Lunar Surface Traversed 30 kilometers
Moon Rocks Returned:110 kilograms
LM Departed Moon:

December 14, 1972
22:54:37 UT (5:54:37 p.m. EST)

Time on Lunar Surface:

74 hr. 59 min. 40 sec.
[19:54:57 UT December 11, 1972 - 22:54:37 GMT December 14, 1972]

Returned to Earth:December 19, 1972
splashdown at 19:24:59 UT (2:24:59p.m. EST)
Mission Duration:301 hr. 51 min. 59 sec.
Retrieval site:Pacific Ocean 17° 53' S, 166° 7' W
Retrieval ship:U.S.S. Ticonderoga

snip
=============================================================
APOLLO 17 
LUNAR SURFACE JOURNAL
Corrected Transcript and Commentary Copyright © 1995 by Eric M. Jones.
All rights reserved.
Last revised 9 July 2012.

snip
=============================================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

=============================================================

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Life, where, here, there, somewhere unexpected? Testing, testing, testing.


Is it safe to go to space like the Moon and beyond?
- LRK -

-----------------------
THE APOLLO 17 POCKET MOUSE EXPERIMENT (BIOCORE)[*]

Travel outside the protective atmosphere of Earth can expose a spacecraft and its occupants to potentially dangerous regions of radiation. Missions conducted to date, including those of Apollo, have been fortunate since radiation doses received by astronauts have been low and of no clinical significance. However, as space missions increase in duration and move beyond the moon, the danger from radiation will become more serious.
In order to gain a better understanding of radiation hazards, the Biocore Experiment was flown on Apollo 17. This experiment attempted to assess the degree to which exposure to cosmic ray particle radiation might present a risk to astronauts. In this study, five pocket mice, with plastic dosimeters implanted beneath the scalp, were flown in a sealed canister. The objective was to determine whether microscopically visible lesions, attributable to particle radiation, could be found in brain, eye, and other tissues in these animals.
Particular interest in the effects of particle radiation on tissue arises from the markedly different character of high energy (HZE) particle radiation as compared with that of electromagnetic (E-M) radiation (X-rays., g-rays). The energy deposition (dosage) in E-M irradiation decreases exponentially with penetration depth into the target. In contrast, the energy deposition by a particle can increase as the particle penetrates the target and decelerates, the maximum energy loss per unit path length (LET: linear energy transfer) occurring near the stopping point (Bragg peak) (figure 1). Most of the energy deposition from particle radiation occurs in a very narrow cylinder around the trajectory, within which there is intense ionization of the target’s atoms. While the concept of dosage is not strictly meaningful in assessing the radiobiological effects of HZE particle radiation, perspective on the potential destructive character is obtained by noting that the "dosage" (energy deposition per gram) in the immediate vicinity of the particle trajectory can be on the order of megarads or higher.
For a given incident energy, a charged particle will penetrate a target to a relatively well-defined depth that is a function of the particle’s charge. Collaterally, the LET of a particle at any point along its trajectory is a function of the particle’s charge and distance from the stopping point. In the present experiment, use was made of this last property, that is, measurement of the LET, where the LET of each HZE particle was determined from measurements on the particle’s track in the subscalp detector. Charge and distance to the particle’s stopping point were calculated from the detector data.
snip
-----------------------

And we sent other life forms to the Moon which required some training.
- LRK -

-----------------------
This Week in The Space Review - 2012 December 10  

Flight training for Apollo: An interview with astronaut Harrison Schmitt
---
This month marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 17, but before astronaut Harrison Schmitt could fly to the surface of the Moon, he had to learn how to fly. Jason Catanzariti interviews the astronaut on his flight training experience and how it prepared him for his Apollo mission.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2199/1
snip
-----------------------

Another reason to save old computer data.
- LRK -

-----------------------

SpaceRef Daily Newsletter

Apollo's Lunar Dust Data Being Restored

Forty years after the last Apollo spacecraft launched, the science from those missions continues to shape our view of the moon. In one of the latest developments, readings from the Apollo 14 and 15 dust detectors have been restored by scientists with the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
snip
-----------------------

Here on Earth search for signs of early life.
- LRK -

-----------------------

SpaceRef Daily Newsletter

Mining ancient ores for clues to early life

An analysis of sulfide ore deposits from one of the world's richest base-metal mines confirms that oxygen levels were extremely low on Earth 2.7 billion years ago, but also shows that microbes were actively feeding on sulfate in the ocean and influencing seawater chemistry during that geological time period.
snip
-----------------------

And the McGill link.
- LRK -

-----------------------
10 Dec 2012 
Mining ancient ores for clues to early life
Scientists probe Canadian sulfide ore to confirm microbial activity in seawater 2.7 billion years ago

An analysis of sulfide ore deposits from one of the world’s richest base-metal mines confirms that oxygen levels were extremely low on Earth 2.7 billion years ago, but also shows that microbes were actively feeding on sulfate in the ocean and influencing seawater chemistry during that geological time period.
The research, reported by a team of Canadian and U.S. scientists in Nature Geoscience, provides new insight into how ancient metal-ore deposits can be used to better understand the chemistry of the ancient oceans – and the early evolution of life.
Sulfate is the second most abundant dissolved ion in the oceans today. It comes from the “rusting” of rocks by atmospheric oxygen, which creates sulfate through chemical reactions with pyrite, the iron sulfide material known as “fool’s gold.”
snip
-----------------------

Now down at the Antarctic survey site another way to look back in time.
- LRK -

-----------------------

Scientists search for life under Antarctic ice

British Antarctic Survey drills into ice sheet to find out if life is possible in extreme cold and dark
With the temperature at a balmy midsummer -17c, drilling has started inAntarctica in an attempt to find evidence of life under a sheet of ice two miles (over 3km) thick.
The scientists and engineers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) hope to find signs of life in the pitch black, intensely cold, nutrient poor, and pristine waters of Lake Ellsworth, which lies deep below sea level and has been isolated from the rest of the world for at least 100,000 years, but probably much longer.
By the weekend sediment and water samples may tell them if life on Earth is possible in such extreme conditions – and they will be just as interested if they learn it is not, and that they have found the limits of life.
"We are about to explore the unknown and I am very excited that our mission will advance our scientific understanding of Antarctica's hidden world," said Prof Martin Siegert from the University of Bristol. "Right now we are working round the clock in a cold, demanding and extreme location – it's testing our own personal endurance, but it is entirely worth it."
snip
-----------------------
Now, I not only need to look up, but around, and down under as well.
Thanks for looking with me.
=============================================================
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/resources/seti

SETI: Searching for Life


snip
=============================================================
Search For Life: Are We Alone?
Century after century, people have looked to the stars with questioning and dreaming minds. Sailors and farmers have found guidance; poets and lovers, inspiration; scientists and scholars, answers. But all of them, and everyone who has ever looked heavenward, have also found questions in the cosmos. Perhaps the most common question pondered over thousands of years is, "Are we alone?"
Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ancient mythologies and contemporary science fiction have presented imaginative possibilities, but how does modern science approach this question? The Search for Life: Are We Alone? at the Rose Center for Earth and Space begins to answer this intriguing question in a breathtaking new Space Show narrated by Academy Award–nominated actor Harrison Ford.
snip 
=============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

=============================================================

Monday, May 30, 2011

Lunar water brings portions of Moon's origin story into question

A wet Moon in the news, well at least more water than expected.
Glass bubbles with interesting contents.
- LRK -

------------------------------------------------------------------
Lunar water brings portions of Moon's origin story into question

Public release date: 26-May-2011


Washington, D.C.—The Moon has much more water than previously thought, a team of scientists led by Carnegie's Erik Hauri has discovered. Their research, published May 26 in ScienceExpress, shows that inclusions of magma trapped within crystals collected during the Apollo 17 mission contain 100 times more water than earlier measurements. These results could markedly change the prevailing theory about the Moon's origin.

The research team used a state-of-the-art NanoSIMS 50L ion microprobe to measure seven tiny samples of magma trapped within lunar crystals as so-called "melt inclusions." These samples came from volcanic glass beads—orange in appearance because of their high titanium content—which contained crystal-hosted melt inclusions. These inclusions were prevented from losing the water within when explosive volcanic eruptions brought them from depth and deposited them on the Moon's surface eons ago.

"In contrast to most volcanic deposits, the melt inclusions are encased in crystals that prevent the escape of water and other volatiles during eruption. These samples provide the best window we have to the amount of water in the interior of the Moon," said James Van Orman of Case Western Reserve University, a member of the science team. The paper's authors are Hauri; Thomas Weinreich, Alberto Saal and Malcolm Rutherford from Brown University; and Van Orman.

Compared with meteorites, Earth and the other inner planets of our solar system contain relatively low amounts of water and volatile elements, which were not abundant in the inner solar system during planet formation. The even lower quantites of these volatile elements found on the Moon has long been claimed as evidence that it must have formed following a high-temperature, catastrophic giant impact. But this new research shows that aspects of this theory must be reevaluated. The study also provides new momentum for returning similar samples from other planetary bodies in the solar system.

"Water plays a critical role in determining the tectonic behavior of planetary surfaces, the melting point of planetary interiors, and the location and eruptive style of planetary volcanoes," said Hauri, a geochemist with Carnegie's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM). "We can conceive of no sample type that would be more important to return to Earth than these volcanic glass samples ejected by explosive volcanism, which have been mapped not only on the Moon but throughout the inner solar system."

Three years ago the same team, in a study led by Saal, reported the first evidence for the presence of water in lunar volcanic glasses and applied magma degassing models to estimate how much water was originally in the magmas before eruption. Building on that study, Weinreich, a Brown University undergraduate, found the melt inclusions, allowing the team to measure the pre-eruption concentration of water in the magma and estimate the amount of water in the Moon's interior.

"The bottom line," said Saal, "is that in 2008, we said the primitive water content in the lunar magmas should be similar to the water content in lavas coming from the Earth's depleted upper mantle. Now, we have proven that is indeed the case."

The study also puts a new twist on the origin of water ice detected in craters at the lunar poles by several recent NASA missions. The ice has been attributed to comet and meteoroid impacts, but it is possible that some of this ice could have come from the water released by past eruptions of lunar magmas.

These findings should also be taken into account when analyzing samples from other planetary bodies in our solar system. The paper's authors say these results show that their method of analysis is the only way to accurately and directly determine the water content of a planet's interior.
###
snip
------------------------------------------------------------------

And from Carnegie Science.
- LRK -

------------------------------------------------------------------

Lunar water brings portions of Moon’s origin story into question


THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2011

Video Press Release
Washington, D.C.—The Moon has much more water than previously thought, a team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Erik Hauri has discovered. Their research, published May 26 in Science Express, shows that inclusions of magma trapped within crystals collected during the Apollo 17 mission contain 100 times more water than earlier measurements. These results could markedly change the prevailing theory about the Moon’s origin.

snip
------------------------------------------------------------------

Space .com has a some more to say and note that one of the authors is only a freshman.  Fresh eyes on a subject can make a difference.
- LRK -

------------------------------------------------------------------

Moon's Interior Wet As Earth's, Rocks Indicate
http://www.space.com/11797-moon-interior-wet-lunar-origins.html

Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 26 May 2011 Time: 02:00 PM ET

snip
Hauri and his team looked at bits of rock brought back to Earth in 1972 by astronauts on NASA's Apollo 17 mission. Specifically, the researchers analyzed pieces called melt inclusions, which are minuscule globules of lunar magma encased within solid crystals. [Infographic: Inside Earth's Moon]

These crystals prevented the magma's water from gassing out during the eruption, thereby largely preserving the original water content of the underground rock.

"These samples provide the best window we have on the amount of water in the interior of the moon,"  study co-author James Van Orman, of Case Western Reserve University, said in a statement.

So melt inclusions are special. They're also rare, and finding the tiny structures in the small store of moon rocks available to researchers was by no means a given. But co-author Thomas Weinreich, at the time a freshman at Brown University, spotted some while poring over the Apollo 17 samples.

"A kid a year out of high school found these for us," Hauri told SPACE.com "That was pretty amazing in and of itself."

Other researchers had found melt inclusions in lunar samples before, but until now nobody had been able to measure their water content. Using a specialized ion microprobe, the team scrutinized seven melt inclusions, the largest just 30 microns across — smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

snip
------
Backscatter electron image of a lunar melt inclusion from Apollo 17 sample 74220, enclosed within an olivine crystal. The inclusion is 30 microns in diameter.
CREDIT: John Armstrong, Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington
----
snip
------------------------------------------------------------------

It takes time to study those small bits from our nearest space neighbor.
I wonder what you could do with a few more shovel fulls of lunar samples?
- LRK -

------------------------------------------------------------------
Goldschmidt Conference Abstracts 2009

The volatile contents of the Apollo 15 
lunar volcanic glasses 
A.E. SAAL-1
, E.H. HAURI-2
, J.A. VAN ORMAN-3
AND M.J. RUTHERFORD-1

1 Brown University, Providence, RI 02192 
(*correspondence: asaal@brown.edu
2 DTM, Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC 20015 
3 Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106 

The general consensus is that the Moon formed and evolved through a single or series of catastrophic heating 
events in which most of the highly volatile elements, especially hydrogen, were evaporated away. That notion has 
changed with the new report showing evidences of indigenous water in lunar volcanic glasses [1]
 Because these glasses are the most primitive melts erupted on the surface of the satellite, 
this result represents the best evidence for the presence of a deep source within the Moon relatively rich in volatile. Here we report new volatile data (C, H2O, F, S, Cl) for over 200 individual Apollo 15 lunar glasses with composition ranging from very-low to high Ti  contents (sample 15427,41; 15426,138; 15426,32). Our new SIMS detection limits  (~0.15 ppm C; ~0.4 ppm H2O, ~0.05 ppm F, ~0.21 ppm  S, ~ 0.04 ppm Cl by weight determined by the repeated analysis of synthetic forsterite located on each sample mount), represent at least 2 orders  of magnitude improvement over previous analytical techniques. After background correction the volatile contents have  the following ranges: C  0-0.14± 0.13 ppm is within background; 0-70 ± 0.4 ppm for H2O; 1.6-60 ± 0.1 ppm for F; 58-885 ± 1.3 ppm for S; and  0-3 ± 0.02 ppm for Cl. Our new values represent an increase in the volatile concentrations by a factor of 2 from previously reported data [1.]  Two outstanding features of the data are the significant correlation among H2O, Cl, F and S contents, and the clear relationship between the volatile and the major element contents of the glasses. The data support the hypothesis that there were significant differences in the initial volatile content, and/or the mechanism of degassing and eruption among these glasses was different. Most importantly, the data suggest that the measured H2O is indigenous to the Moon. Our results suggest that, contrary to the prevailing ideas, the bulk Moon is not uniformly depleted in highly volatile elements, and the presence of water, in particular, must be included to constrain models for the thermal and chemical evolution of the Moonís interior. 

[1] Saal et al. (2008) Nature 454, 192-195.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Watch another video and more information.
- LRK -

------------------------------------------------------------------

THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2011

Water on the Moon 100 X Higher Than Previously Measured: A Watershed Discovery

A team of NASA-funded researchers has measured for the first time water from the moon in the form of tiny globules of molten rock, which have turned to glass-like material trapped within crystals. Data from these newly-discovered lunar melt inclusions indicate the water content of lunar magma is 100 times higher than previous studies suggested. 

The inclusions were found in lunar sample 74220, the famous high-titanium "orange glass soil" of volcanic origin collected during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The scientific team used a state-of-the-art ion microprobe instrument to measure the water content of the inclusions, which were formed during explosive eruptions on the moon approximately 3.7 billion years ago. 

The results published in the May 26 issue of Science Express raise questions about aspects of the "giant impact theory" of how the moon was created. That theory predicted very low water content of lunar rock due to catastrophic degassing during the collision of Earth with a Mars-sized body very early in its history.


snip


"Water plays a critical role in determining the tectonic behavior of planetary surfaces, the melting point of planetary interiors and the location and eruptive style of planetary volcanoes," said Erik Hauri, a geochemist with the Carnegie Institution of Washington and lead author of the study. "I can conceive of no sample type that would be more important to return to Earth than these volcanic glass samples ejected by explosive volcanism, which have been mapped not only on the moon but throughout the inner solar system." 

snip
------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyone with a broom and dustpan handy.
Someone needs to go to the Moon and do some sweeping.
- LRK -

Thanks for looking up with me.
==============================================================
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17 
Apollo 17 was the eleventh and final manned mission in the American Apollo space program. Launched at 12:33 a.m. EST on December 7, 1972, with a crew of Commander Eugene CernanCommand Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 remains the most recent manned Moon landing and the most recent manned flight beyond low Earth orbit.

Apollo 17 was the sixth Apollo lunar landing, the first night launch of a U.S. human spaceflight and the final manned launch of a Saturn V booster. It was a "J-type mission", missions including three-day lunar surface stays, extended scientific capability, and the Lunar Roving Vehicle. While Evans remained inlunar orbit above in the Command/Service Module, Cernan and Schmitt spent just more than three days on the lunar surface in the Taurus-Littrow valley, performing three EVAs or moonwalks during which they collected lunar samples and deployed scientific instruments. Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt returned to Earth on December 19 after an approximately 12-day mission.

Apollo 17 also broke several records set by previous flights, including the longest manned lunar landing flight; the longest total lunar surface extravehicular activities; the largest lunar sample return, and the longest time in lunar orbit. 

snip
==============================================================

Taurus–Littrow is a lunar valley located on the near side at the coordinates 20.0°N 31.0°E. It served as the landing site for the American Apollo 17mission in December 1972, the last manned mission to the Moon to date.[1][2] The valley is located on the southeastern edge of Mare Serenitatis along a ring of mountains formed between 3.8 and 3.9 billion years ago when a large object impacted the Moon, forming Mare Serenitatis and pushing rock outward and upward. Taurus–Littrow is located in the Taurus mountain range and south of Littrow crater, features after which the valley received its name. The valley's name, coined by the Apollo 17 crew, was eventually approved by the International Astronomical Union in 1973.[1]

Data collected on Apollo 17 show that the valley is composed primarily of feldspar-rich breccia in the large massifs surrounding the valley and basaltunderlying the valley floor, covered by an unconsolidated layer of regolith, or mixed materials, formed by various geologic events.[3] Taurus–Littrow was selected as the Apollo 17 landing site after the other candidates were eliminated for various reasons. The landing site was chosen with the objectives of sampling highland material and young volcanic material in the same location.[4]

snip
==============================================================

WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

==============================================================