Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2019

missions could have been imple- mented with a relatively modest economic effort, significantly in- creasing the scientific production of the whole program. Instead of sending man back to the Moon, the hardware for these missions had been partly converted for other space programs and partly used to adorn parking lots of NASA centers and museum rooms in dif- ferent cities. At that time, such a waste was not immediately felt, as it was widely believed that within A POLLO 17 − A close-up of Shorty Crater. [NASA, Project Apollo Archive] A POLLO 17 − Panoramic view of South and North massifs. In the foreground, Harrison Schmitt stretches out to open the solar panels of the SEP transmitter. A high-resolution version of this image is available at https://www.astropublishing.com/moonscapes/A17_South&North_Massifs.pdf [NASA, Project Apollo Archive; image merging by Astro Publishing]