3D Reconstruction of Lunar Rock Samples from the Apollo 17 Mission

International audienceThe Apollo 17 manned mission land-ed in the Taurus Littrow valley on the Moon in De-cember 1972. The geology of this site was thoroughly investigated during extra vehicular activities performed during three days spent at the surface [1, 2]. A total of 111 kg of well-documented rock and soil samples were collected and brought back to Earth. Among several waypoints of interest, astronauts spent more than one hour to investigate five large boulder fragments at Sta-tion 6, lying at the base of the North Massif. Schmitt et al.’s [2] analysis indicates that original single boulder originated in Crisium-age melt breccia ejecta overlain by Serenitatis-age melt breccia ejecta. Earlier photoge-ologic interpretations had suggested that the North Massif was largely Serenitatis in age [3, 4]. In a previ-ous study [5], we used scanned photographs taken in situ with astronaut’s Hasselblad film cameras to recon-struct a 3D model of each of the boulders using Struc-ture-from-Motion photogrammetry techniques. In addi-tion to the 3D reconstruction of the boulders them-selves reported in [5], we have now reconstructed in 3D several rock samples hammered from the boulders, using archived photographs from the Lunar Receiving Lab facility in Houston