Word: craterous
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...successfully operated Lunokhod 1 for more than 10 months (according to a local joke, he is a former Moscow cabbie), the 1,848-lb. vehicle promptly began reconnoitering the area. In the span of about half an hour, said Tass, it crawled about 30 yds., taking a small crater "in its stride." Its protruding lobster-like TV eyes gave the ground team "a good view of the moonscape." Then, after completing this initial exercise, the robot was given a day's rest so that it could soak up the sun and recharge its solar-powered batteries...
...aimed. To obtain a view of Schmitt and a giant boulder, Cernan insisted on scrambling up an incline. He also aimed and re-aimed until he was finally able to squeeze into one frame the lunar rover, Schmitt and the startling orange soil that Schmitt had discovered at Shorty Crater. Geologist Schmitt also proved an adept lensman, but as might be expected, he showed more of an eye for lunar rocks than for his fellow astronaut...
...cargo of rocks includes fragmented specimens called breccias that may have been formed far back in the moon's history, perhaps as long as 4 billion years ago. Even more important, perhaps, are the intriguing orange soil samples scraped up by Schmitt and Cernan at Shorty Crater. The soil may well provide evidence of relatively recent volcanic activity on the moon and could be the youngest lunar material ever brought back to earth. Said NASA Geologist Farouk El Baz: "The Apollo 17 site should give us clues to the real end of the lunar time scale, the time scale...
...command ship out of lunar orbit. As the spacecraft emerged from behind the moon for the last time, the astronauts aimed their TV camera at the surface below and sent back the first live pictures of features on the backside that are invisible from earth, including the giant Tsiolkovsky Crater (named for the Russian space pioneer). Next day, some 180,000 miles from earth, Command Module Pilot Evans, who had been out of the spotlight while Cernan and Schmitt walked the moon, took the stage for himself. After emerging from America's hatch, he crawled back, hand over hand...
...lunar material may have oxidized, or rusted. That, in turn, meant that it had probably been exposed to water or oxygen. The only likely source for such vapors on the arid, airless moon were volcanic vents in the lunar surface. Indeed, some scientists had suspected earlier that Shorty Crater (which resembles volcanic vents on earth) had been created volcanically rather than by the impact of a meteorite (which is how most of the moon's craters are believed to have been formed). As they await the precious samples of orange soil, some scientists are now speculating that Shorty...