The Taurus-Littrow Valley through LRO's Eyes

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  • 
    ID: 5053 Visualization

    Flying over the Taurus-Littrow Valley

    Dec. 5th, 2022
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    The camera flies low over the Taurus-Littrow valley, primarily east to west, arriving at the South Massif, where it tilts up to view the Earth. || On December 11, 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt landed their lunar module, Challenger, in a lunar valley named for the Taurus mountain range and the nearby Littrow crater. Cernan and Schmitt spent three days exploring the valley before rejoining Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans in lunar orbit. This visualization uses imagery and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's cameras to show the terrain of the valley and the astronauts' view of the faraway Earth. ||

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  • 
    ID: 4714 Visualization

    Lee Lincoln Scarp at the Apollo 17 Landing Site

    May 13th, 2019
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    An animated view of Lee Lincoln scarp from above and from near ground level. This visualization is created from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographs and elevation mapping. The scarp is at the western end of the Taurus-Littrow valley, landing site of Apollo 17, and was explored by the astronauts on their second moonwalk. || The Lee Lincoln scarp is a low ridge or step about 80 meters high and running north-south through the western end of the Taurus-Littrow valley, site of the Apollo 17 Moon landing. This lobate scarp marks the location of a relatively young, low-angle thrust fault. The land west of the fault was forced up and over the eastern side as the lunar crust contracted.In a May 2019 paper published in Nature Geoscience, Thomas Watters and his coauthors provide evidence that this fault and others like it are still active and producing moonquakes today. Seismometers left on the Moon by Apollo astronauts recorded hundreds of events between 1969 and 1977, including 28 shallow moonquakes. The study narrowed the locations of these quakes and found that many of them occurred near scarps, implying that the forces creating the scarps also caused the quakes, and they continue to shape the lunar surface. The Lee Lincoln scarp was only about 13 kilometers from one of the epicenters identified by the scientists.The Apollo 17 astronauts drove their lunar rover onto the scarp during their second day on the lunar surface, and this remains the only extraterrestrial scarp visited by humans. ||

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  • 
    ID: 4302 Visualization

    Apollo 17 Landing Site

    Dec. 8th, 2015
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    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. ||

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