May 30, 2014
Constant Companion
NASA images compiled by " rel="nofollow Ross Sackett
NASA images (top row) AS11-40-5963, AS12-49-7286, AS14-68-9453; (bottom row) AS15-82-11140, AS16-116-18689, AS17-142-21791
A rock hammer is the field geologist's constant companion. Used to expose fresh rock on a weathered outcrop, clean the walls of a trench, or split fossil-bearing layers in sandstone and shale, the multi-functional geologist's hammer even does duty around camp splitting firewood and digging latrines. Each team of Apollo astronauts brought a hammer to the moon. On Apollo 11 and 12 a light (0.9 kg) hammer was used mainly to drive core tubes into the resisting regolith. On the more extensive geological traverses of Apollos 14 through 17 they brought a heavier hammer to knock chips from boulders and model as a scale object in photographs. Though light in the hand in the moon's weak gravity, the heavier hammer's 1.3 kg mass still packed the wallop of a hefty 3 pound hand sledge. An oddity of the Apollo hammers is their chisel end: though the lunar sites visited had a decidedly "hard-rock" lithology of (mostly) basalt, the chisel pattern resembles the layer-splitting hammers favored by terrestrial sedimentary geologists. Attached to an extension handle the hammer's chisel end could double as a hoe to dig shallow trenches in the regolith; however, I cannot find any Apollo surface photos showing them ever used this way. At the close of the final Apollo EVA geologist-astronaut Harrison 'Jack' Schmitt threw the last Apollo rock hammer a distance of some 40 meters. How long will his record stand before it is broken in a future Lunar Olympics?
" rel="nofollow Ross Sackett
P.S. Not many Apollo geological hammers are on public display. If you know of any please share in the Comments section.
Related Links
" rel="nofollow Apollo lunar geological tools
Jack Schmitt's record-setting hammer throw: " rel="nofollow Where is the hammer?, " rel="nofollow (video) (no longer a companion)
