sweat for the last seven hours. To aid
movement, their gloves had been
designed to fit tightly against the tips
of their fingers; the pressure and the
pain was on the ends of the nails.
Irwin resolved to cut his nails and
advised his commander to do the
same, but for some reason—perhaps
fearful that it might compromise his
own dexterity on the surface—Scott
declined.
Irwin was also uncomfortable. A
problem with his drinking water bag
had left him absolutely parched for
more than seven hours. “There was
a nozzle that you’d bend down to
open a valve so you could suck
the water out and drink it within the
protection of the space suit,” he
explained, “but I could never get my
drink bag to work and I never got a
single drink of water during the whole
second night on the Moon. “Settled”
probably was not an appropriate
word, for conditions inside Falcon
cannot have been pleasant: with
the presence of all the rocks and soil
specimens, the smell of the Moon—a
strong, gunpowder-like aroma—pervaded the air and dust covered
everything. They stashed their filthy
suits at the back of the cabin, making sure that the gloves were fitted,
so as not to impair their seals, then
debriefed to Houston and bedded
down for their second night’s sleep
on the Moon.
The next two EVAs would bring tremendous scientific discoveries, which
continue to resonate to this day.
Early on 1 August, Capcom
Gordon Fullerton woke Scott and
Irwin with some unwelcome news.
Two days earlier, the lunar module
During EVA 2, Irwin and Scott collected rock and soil samples, a core sample, and trench samples of an area
about 5 km southeast of the Lunar Module. Credit: NASA via Retro Space Images
time I was out on the surface of the
Moon.” He did, however, manage
to gobble down a fruit stick inside
his helmet…and that helped him to
keep going when the time came to
assemble the ALSEP.
Now, having doffed his suit, Irwin
guzzled water like a jogger, then
settled down with Scott for their
Falcon had touched down at a slight
angle—one of its legs had set down
in a crater—and this had caused it
to lose a sizeable amount of water.
Fullerton asked the men to check
behind the ascent engine cover. He
was right and the astronauts quickly
scooped it into a spent lithium hydroxide canister.
Scott and Irwin’s second Moonwalk was slightly shorter than their
first, in order to provide more exploration and less traveling time between
geological stops. One relatively lowpriority activity had been eliminated
and a greater measure of freedom
was given to the efforts of the
astronauts; Mission Control and the
geologists in Houston would depend
heavily upon their descriptions and
observations and it would be Scott
and Irwin’s choice on exactly where
they chose for their major sampling.
“We’re looking now, primarily, for
a wide variety of rock samples from
the [Apennine] Front,” Capcom Joe
Allen told them. “You’ve seen the
breccias already. We think there may
very well be some large crystal[line]
igneous [rocks] and we’d like samples of those and whatever variety
of rocks which you’re able to find for
us—but primarily a large number of
documented samples and fragment
samples.”
Scott was in full agreement; Allen
was talking their language and after
two years of geological training he
felt ready and confident to explore.
A few minutes before 9:00 a.m.
EDT on 1 August 1971, safely buckled
aboard the lunar rover, the astronauts set off due south, heading for
Mount Hadley Delta, upon whose
slopes they would concentrate their
energies.
It was a scenic trip, Irwin recalled
in his memoir, To Rule the Night.
Ahead of them, and all around
them, the terrain was literally splattered with craters, right up the slopes
of Hadley Delta, and the height
of the mountain rivaled ѡ