Flying over the Taurus-Littrow Valley
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- Visualizations by:
- Ernie Wright
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- Produced by:
- David Ladd
- View full credits
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.
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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Producer
- David Ladd (Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc.) [Lead]
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Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
LRO NAC (A.K.A. Narrow Angle Camera) (Collected with the LROC sensor)
LRO Stereo DEM (Collected with the LROC NAC sensor)
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: 4714 Visualization
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Read moreAn 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: 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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ID: 4302 Visualization
Apollo 17 Landing Site
Read moreApollo 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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ID: 14245 Produced Video
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