484 a
The LM is visible as a tiny speck in the plain on the right over the rock which was referred to as ‘Contact Rock’.
On their way back to the LM from station C’, the astronauts made a first stop at station C1 located about 1.25 kilometers east-northeast of the LM; 70 m north north west of station C’; and about 35 m southeast of the Cone Crater rim. Station C1 was approximately 80 m higher than the LM.
“During the whole EVA the crew had trouble judging distance because there were no familiar objects to provide scale, no color differences to break up the lunar scene, and no haze to help differentiate smaller, relatively nearby craters from larger ones in the distance. To their untrained earthly eye, only the LM provided scale” (from the ALSJ mission summary).
“This photograph is a great indication of how far Shepard and Mitchell had travelled, mostly uphill and without the aid of a lunar rover used on the subsequent J-missions” (Constantine, p. 55).
484 b
The white rocks at station C1 were the largest explored by the crew.
After he photographed the nearby Contact Rock with the distant LM beyond in the previous frame (AS14-68-9448), Mitchell aimed to his right to take these overlapping photographs of Layered Rock (3m long and 2 m high, left) and Saddle Rock (4.5 m long, center and right).
“One of the rocks we sampled in that area was a white breccia (a rock made up of pieces of stone embedded in a matrix). The white coloring came from the very high percentage of feldspar that was in the breccia. That rock, and others in the area, were believed to approach 4.6 billion years in age,” said Alan Shepard (NASA SP-350, p. 236).
133:39:15 Mitchell: One of these boulders, Fredo (Haise at Mission Control), is broken open. They’re really brown boulders on the outside, and the inner face that’s broken is white, and then another one that most of it is white. They are right in the same area. [...]
133:39:39 Mitchell: That’s where we’re headed right now. It’s about 50 yards (45 m) away.
133:39:45 Shepard: Why don’t you go on down and start, and let me bring the MET down.
133:39:48 Mitchell: All right. Yeah. It’s further than it looked.
133:39:53 Shepard: That’s the order of the day. (Long Pause)
133:40:24 Mitchell: Okay, Fredo. I’m right in the midst of a whole pile of very large boulders here. Let’s see what I can do to grab a meaningful sample.
133:40:40 Haise (Mission Control): Roger, Ed.
133:40:48 Mitchell: First of all, let me start by photographing (pause) this whole area. (Long Pause) They (meaning the boulders)’re all so darn big that there’s hardly anything that I can find (that’s small enough to put in a sample bag). Let’s see if I can chip one.
484 c
This beautiful portrait of the southern face of Saddle Rock shows the hammer and one of the sample bags which Mitchell put on the smaller white boulder in the foreground.
“Indeed, for various reasons, the 14 crew may have been less well prepared, geologically, than any of the other crews. Nonetheless, they had been exposed to a certain amount of geology over the years and had been briefed about things to look for and, ultimately, did a conscientious job of collecting a representative set of samples - keeping their eyes open for anything out of the ordinary - and took the requisite documentation photos” (from the ALSJ mission summary).
484 d
A hammer and a small collection bag lie atop a small lunar boulder to give some indication of size of boulders clustered together near the rim of Cone Crater at station C1.
The boulder referred to as ‘Layered’ Rock is at the left and ‘Saddle Rock’ is at the right.
“Scientists believe these rocks were blasted out of the Moon’s crust by the gigantic impact that formed the Imbrium Basin” (Light, caption 68).
133:42:31 Mitchell: I’ve chipped off one of the white rocks. I put it in bag 13-N. I’ll photograph it. There don’t seem to be any samples of the white rocks lying around that are small enough for me to sample and be sure they’re what I’m looking for.
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