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Moon Apollo 17
ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN…one giant leap for mankind! There is only one world in our Solar System besides Earth on which humans have walked—the Moon. This enigmatic image was obtained by the astronauts on the surface of the Moon during the Apollo 17 mission in December, 1972. A few days after this image was taken, humanity left the Moon and has yet to return in the flesh. The later Apollo missions, including 17, had a strong scientific focus. Astronaut Harrison Schmitt is shown preparing to take a soil sample. Many scientific instruments were deployed and samples were obtained. The Moon rocks were critical in advancing our knowledge of the formation of the Moon—it is now thought that billions of years ago, a rocky impactor about the size of Mars hit the young Earth, and that the debris scattered by that collision orbited the Earth briefly before coalescing into the Moon. Image Credit: NASA
tags: moon
