Hubble’s View of the Apollo 17 Landing Site

This image of the Taurus-Littrow valley shows the Apollo 17 landing site (the "+" symbol in the image). This region marks the last time – December 1972 – that humans walked and drove on the Moon's surface. Astronomers are using the Apollo 17 images (and those of the Apollo 15 site) as "ground-truth" in an effort to discriminate lunar materials enriched in ilmenite, a titanium-bearing oxide of potential value as a resource in human exploration of the Moon. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys took the image on Aug. 16, 2005.

About the data

These HST data are from proposal 10719 . NASA's HST Lunar observation team is led by Chief Scientist J. Garvin. The team includes M. Robinson (Northwestern Univ.), D. Skillman (NASA/GSFC), B. Hapke (Univ. of Pittsburgh), C. Pieters (Brown Univ.), M. Ulmer (Northwestern Univ.), J. Bell (Cornell Univ.), and J. Taylor (Univ. of Hawaii).