Apollo 17 Landing Site
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- Visualizations by:
- Ernie Wright
- View full credits
Apollo 17, crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt, was the final Apollo mission to the Moon. The Lunar Module Challenger landed in the Taurus-Littrow valley on December 11, 1972 and remained there for 75 hours. The landing site is a relatively flat spot among low mountains at the southeastern edge of Mare Serenitatis.
The images here are designed for display on NASA's hyperwall. They help tell the story of Apollo 17's exploration of the Taurus-Littrow site using data and imaging from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and photographs taken by the astronauts. LRO's detailed and comprehensive remote sensing capabilities have fostered a reinterpretation of the geology of the site.
An oblique image of the Taurus-Littrow valley taken by the LRO narrow-angle camera. This was cropped from M192703697LR. The Apollo 17 LM descent stage shadow is precisely centered in the image. The resolution is about 4 meters per pixel.
A nadir view of the Apollo 17 landing site taken by the LRO narrow-angle camera. West is up, north is to the right. The early morning Sun angle is similar to the lighting at the time of the landing. The resolution is about 0.48 meters per pixel. This is part of M162107606L.
A reverse-angle
oblique view of Taurus-Littrow taken July 7, 2012, cropped and scaled from M1096343661. Looking east (slew angle 56°) with afternoon Sun (subsolar longitude 48°W).
At Station 6, the astronauts collected samples from a boulder that had rolled down the side of the North Massif. The LROC image is a detail from M134991788R. See also this LROC featured image blog post.
Another oblique image (M1182232465LE) of the Taurus-Littrow valley taken by the LRO narrow-angle camera on March 29, 2015.
AS17-134-20430, a panoramic view of the North Massif from Station 1, taken during the first EVA.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
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Visualizer
- Ernie Wright (USRA) [Lead]
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Scientist
- Noah Petro (NASA/GSFC)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
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LRO NAC (Narrow Angle Camera)
ID: 652
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related Pages
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ID: 5053 Visualization
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ID: 4717 Visualization
The Taurus-Littrow Valley through LRO's Eyes
Read moreThis visualization of the Taurus-Littrow valley, site of the Apollo 17 Moon landing, uses multiple Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter datasets to zoom into the valley and illustrate the paths taken by the astronauts during their three days of exploration at the site. The data includes wide-angle (WAC) and narrow-angle (NAC) camera images, LOLA laser altimetry, and a high-resolution elevation map created from NAC stereo pairs. The imagery was chosen to approximately match the lighting conditions at the time of the landing. Color-coded trails with numbered stops (called stations in astronaut lingo) show where Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt drove their lunar rover — orange on day 1, blue on day 2, and green on day 3. ||
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