Apollo 17 - Planning and Training

Planning and Training

Like Apollo 15 and Apollo 16, Apollo 17 was slated to be a "J-mission", an Apollo mission type that featured lunar surface stays of three days, higher scientific capability, and the usage of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). Since Apollo 17 was to be the final lunar landing of the Apollo program, high-priority landing sites that had not been visited previously were given consideration for potential exploration. A landing in the crater Copernicus was considered, but was ultimately rejected because Apollo 12 had already obtained samples from that impact, and three other Apollo expeditions had already visited the vicinity of Mare Imbrium. A landing in the lunar highlands near the crater Tycho was also considered, but was rejected because of the rough terrain found there and a landing on the lunar far side in the crater Tsiolkovskiy was rejected due to technical considerations and the operational costs of maintaining communication during surface operations. A landing in a region southwest of Mare Crisium was also considered, but rejected on the grounds that a Soviet spacecraft could easily access the site; Luna 20 eventually did so shortly after the Apollo 17 site selection was made.

After the elimination of several sites, three sites made the final consideration for Apollo 17: Alphonsus crater, Gassendi crater, and the Taurus-Littrow valley. In making the final landing site decision, mission planners took into consideration the primary objectives for Apollo 17: obtaining old highlands material from a substantial distance from Mare Imbrium, sampling material from young volcanic activity (i.e. less than three billion years), and having minimal ground overlap with the orbital ground tracks of Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 to maximize the amount of new data obtained.

The Taurus-Littrow site was selected with the prediction that the crew would be able to obtain samples of old highland material from the remnants of a landslide event that occurred on the south wall of the valley and the possibility of relatively young, explosive volcanic activity in the area. Although the valley is similar to the landing site of Apollo 15 in that it is on the border of a lunar mare, the advantages of Taurus-Littrow were believed to outweigh the drawbacks, thus leading to its selection as the Apollo 17 landing site.

Apollo 17 was the first and only lunar landing mission to carry the "Traverse Gravimeter Experiment" (TGE), an experiment built by Draper Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed to provide relative gravity measurements throughout the landing site at various locations during the mission's moonwalks. Scientists would then use this data to gather information about the geological substructure of the landing site and the surrounding vicinity.

As with previous lunar landings, the Apollo 17 astronauts underwent an extensive training program that included training to collect samples on the surface, usage of the spacesuits, navigation in the Lunar Roving Vehicle, field geology training, survival training, splashdown and recovery training, and equipment/hardware training.