Fact sheet
Station 6a was the highest point reached on the Apollo soils on the Apennine Front. A soil sample (15400- 15404) was collected from a saddle on the top of a small boulder (15405 is a nearby piece of that boulder). As such, it is not a typical soil. 15404 is the 4-10 mm fraction of the soil. It is very immature and has an unusual grain size distribution weight towards large particles. The average grain size distribution of 15401 is 89 microns. Notable particles in the soil include the partly glassy KREEP particle (15404,3) is partly glass and 15404,5 a KREEP basalt. 10 green glass beads and several other glass particles have been described from 15401. Our particle is basaltic in composition.
The sample (15401-15404) weighed 152.7 grams before analysis and has not been dated.
Further details of this and other Apollo samples are here: http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/
Note our thin section has previously been gold coated for analysis. This coating has mostly been removed but gold still resides in fractures.
The Apollo 15 landing site was in the Apennine Highlands, and close to Hadley Rille — a long, narrow winding valley. Approximately 76 kg of lunar material, including soil, rock, core-tube and deep-core samples, were returned to Earth.
This mission was the first flight of the Lunar Roving Vehicle which allowed the astronauts to venture further from the Lunar Module than in previous missions. During three periods of extravehicular activity, or EVA, on July 31st, and August 1st and 2nd, Scott and Irwin completed a record 18 hours, 37 minutes of exploration, travelling 17.5 miles, in the first car that humans had ever driven on the Moon.
Apollo 15 was launched on 26 July 1971.
