updated: Jul 27 2021, 09:29 ist
David R. Scott was not about to pass by an interesting rock without stopping. It was July 31, 1971, and he and James B. Irwin, his fellow Apollo 15 astronaut, were the first people to drive on the moon. After a six-hour inaugural jaunt in the new lunar rover, the two were heading back to their lander, the Falcon, when Scott made an unscheduled pit stop.
West of a crater called Rhysling, Scott scrambled out of the rover and quickly picked up a black lava rock, full of holes formed by escaping gas. Scott and Irwin had been trained in geology and knew the specimen, a vesicular rock, would be valuable to scientists on Earth. They also knew that if they asked for permission to stop and get it, clock-watching mission managers would say no. So Scott made up a story that they stopped the rover because he was fidgeting with his seat belt. The sample was discovered when the astronauts returned to Earth, and “Seat Belt Rock” became one of the most prized ge
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