Word: lunar
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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With each mission to the moon, U.S. astronauts have become increasingly skilled as photographers. Apollo 17 proved to be no exception to the rule. Last week, as NASA began releasing pictures shot by the Apollo 17 crew, it be came clear that the last lunar mission had produced the best photography of the entire Apollo program: more brilliant in color, sharper in detail and more imaginative in overall composition...
...suit and thrust himself backward so that the chest-mounted camera could be properly 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...
...what the director of the Apollo program, Rocco Petrone, called "the most perfect mission," and to America's remarkably successful manned assault on the moon. Between the December 1968 mission of Apollo 8 and the final flight of Apollo 17, a dozen U.S. astronauts had walked on the lunar surface and-as President Nixon noted last week-"of 24 men sent to circle the moon or to stand upon it...24 men returned to earth alive and well." Said Christopher Kraft, director of Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center: "Apollo was the greatest engineering feat of all our lives...
...moon rocks, 3,000 photographs and reams of scientific data. Every sign pointed to the likelihood that the Taurus-Littrow landing site had fulfilled the greatest hopes of the scientists who selected it, that the findings in the area would help fill important gaps in the lunar chronology. Apollo's 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...
...Apollo's three-day homeward voyage, the astronauts had exceptionally smooth sailing. "America has found some fair winds and following seas," said Cernan after the main engine had successfully lifted the 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...