A new
snapshot from NASA's newest moon probe has revealed the 38-year-old tracks leftover
from a grueling moonwalk by two Apollo astronauts who tried, and failed,
to reach a tantalizing crater.
The
photograph was taken by a camera on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and
shows the terrain surrounding the landing site of Apollo 14 astronauts Alan
Shepard and Edgar Mitchell, who touched down on the moon Feb. 5, 1971 in their
Antares lander. It was released Wednesday and confirmed that the astronauts came
just 100 feet (30 meters) from the rim of their target, Cone Crater, before
they turned back, LRO researchers said.
At first
glance, the image appears to depict a stark lunar surface devoid of any
evidence that humans were there. But a closer inspection can reveal the glints of the
Antares lander and a nearby experiment deployed by the astronauts, which appear
at the lower left of the snapshot. The tracks from the boot prints of Shepard and
Mitchell appear as wispy, winding lines that are a slightly darker shade of
gray from the surrounding terrain.
The region
of the moon explored by Shepard and Mitchell on the Apollo 14 mission is a
rocky, hilly area known as the Fra Mauro highlands. The mission was the third
of six Apollo
moon landings between 1969 and 1972.
LRO has
beamed home an earlier view of the Apollo 14 landing site, as well as snapshots of Tranquility
Base, the first manned landing site visited by Apollo 11 astronauts on July
20, 1969. Researchers overseeing the probe's main camera, called LROC, from
Arizona State University released the new images.
The hunt
for Cone Crater
On Feb. 6,
1971, during the second moonwalk of their 33-hour stay on the lunar surface, Shepard
and Mitchell tried to reach the distant Cone Crater in order to peer down at
its bottom. The crater was nearly a mile (1.4 km) away from Antares - placing
the lander out of sight for the moonwalkers - and the journey was exhausting
since it was almost entirely uphill.
To make
matters worse, Shepard and Mitchell had trouble walking uphill in the soft
lunar surface and their map of the terrain left much to be desired.
"Another
problem was that the ruggedness and unevenness of the terrain made it very hard
to navigate by landmarks, which is the way a man on foot gets around," wrote Shepard,
who died in 1998, in an account of the mission for NASA's History Office a few years after the mission. "Ed and I had difficulty in agreeing on the way to Cone, just how far we
had traveled, and where we were."
It was
sometimes easier, Shepard wrote, to carry an equipment cart that was supposed
to ease their burden during moonwalks because dragging it as designed was just
too tough.
"And
then came what had to be one of the most frustrating experiences on the
traverse. We thought we were nearing the rim of Cone, only to find we were at
another and much smaller crater still some distance from Cone," he wrote in the
NASA account. "At that point, I radioed Houston that our positions were
doubtful, and that there was probably quite a way to go yet to reach Cone."
In the new
LRO image, one landmark dubbed Saddle Rock that was photographed by Shepard and
Mitchell can be easily spotted, showing how close the astronauts actually were
to their lunar quarry.
Shepard,
one of NASA's original seven Mercury astronauts, and Mitchell ended their
second moonwalk on a light note despite their frustration trying to reach Cone
Crater. Shepard attached a six-iron golf club to the end of a collecting tool
to become the first person to golf on the moon.
While
Shepard and Mitchell worked on the lunar surface, their crewmate Stuart Roosa
orbited the moon in their command module. They left the moon on Feb. 6, 1971
and returned to Earth three days later.
The $504
million LRO spacecraft, meanwhile, is part of NASA's first wave of new missions
to explore the moon. The orbiter launched June 18 on a year-long mission to map
the moon, study its surface composition and search for hidden water ice tucked
away in the permanent shadows of craters at the lunar poles.
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