On December 12, 1972, during Apollo 17's second moonwalk at Shorty Crater, astronaut-geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt spotted something odd underfoot and called out, "There is orange soil!" according to a NASA History Office account of the mission published in News & Notes. Commander Eugene Cernan checked it out personally and agreed it was real. This exchange was recorded in the mission audio logs and led to the discovery of tiny beads of volcanic glass that had been lying on the Moon for billions of years.
A find nobody expected
Apollo 17 launched from Kennedy Space Center at 12:33 a.m. EST on December 7, 1972, the only Apollo mission ever launched at night. The landing took place four days later in the valley of Taurus-Littrow. Schmitt, a trained geologist, and Cernan were studying Shorty Crater when Schmitt noticed that the soil had turned orange-red. He quickly dug a trench across the rim of the crater and pushed a core tube to collect samples below the surface level, the NASA account notes. The astronauts worked quickly because their oxygen supply was limited.
