The orange soil of Apollo 17
Event image. A field photograph preserves the orange soil's position within disturbed ground at Station 4.
NASA media-use guidelines · credited mission imagery, resized to WebP
· Original image source · Image licenceA patch of colour noticed during an Apollo moonwalk became a laboratory investigation of tiny glass grains.
- World
- Moon
- Case date or period
- Image archive · 1972–1973
Look closer
At Station 4, the Apollo 17 crew encountered orange material in the otherwise subdued lunar soil. Two field photographs preserve its setting and the disturbance made while investigating it.
Follow the evidence
The photomicrograph changes the scale from a trench to individual grains and fragments. Keep the field appearance separate from the laboratory lighting and magnification used to examine the sample.
A discovery in a shortened stop
The orange patch was encountered at Station 4 beside Shorty crater during Apollo 17’s second surface excursion. NASA’s mission history records that the crew had spent extra time at an earlier stop, so Mission Control had already cut much of the planned Station 4 work. Harrison Schmitt noticed the unexpected colour; Eugene Cernan came over to check it. They collected the material and a core sample before continuing to Camelot crater. The photographs therefore preserve a discovery made within the practical limits of a timed field traverse, rather than a laboratory prepared to examine orange soil.
From a patch to volcanic droplets
The returned sample changed the question from colour to origin. NASA’s account identifies small, titanium-rich glass spheres, while its APOD explanation describes particles smaller than a tenth of a millimetre. Chemical analysis and dating linked the nearly rounded grains to molten droplets that cooled during an explosive eruption about 3.64 billion years ago. Compare the disturbed ground in the two field frames with the magnified grain photograph: the scene establishes where material was collected; the microscope exposes its physical form. Neither photograph alone measures the eruption’s age. That inference depends on the returned sample and its subsequent analysis.
Sources & further reading
- View of the orange soil which Apollo 17 crewmen found at Station 4 during EVA — NASA Image and Video Library / JSC
- View of the orange soil which Apollo 17 crewmen found at Station 4 during EVA — NASA Image and Video Library / JSC
- PHOTOMICROGRAPH - SPHERE FRAGMENTS - "ORANGE" SOIL - APOLLO 17 - MSC — NASA Image and Video Library / JSC
- 50 Years Ago: Apollo 17 Lands at Taurus-Littrow — NASA History
- Strange Orange Soil on the Moon — NASA APOD