Apollo 14 Hike to Cone Crater

After landing on the Moon in February 1971, the Apollo 14 astronauts set out on a hike toward Cone crater. Navigating this terrain proved to be a difficult task, and they didn’t quite reach the crater edge, but they did manage to meet their science goals along the way. Now, using data gathered from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we can retrace their moonwalk, showing how close the astronauts actually came to the rim of Cone crater. The visualization in this video uses LRO images and elevation data to recreate the outbound path of their second moonwalk, and shows the astronauts’ stops along the way, labeled with distance from the lander and elevation information. While the Apollo 14 crew missed their chance to see into Cone crater from the surface, LRO now gives us a great aerial view.