INFLIGHT - APOLLO 17 (FENDER)

S72-55170 (11 Dec. 1972) --- These five men in the Mission Control Center ponder the solution to the problem of the damage to the right rear fender of the Apollo 17 Lunar Roving Vehicle at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. During the first lunar surface extravehicular activity a hammer got underneath the fender and a part of it was knocked off. Astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt were reporting a problem with lunar dust because of the damaged fender. They sought some way to repair the broken fender. Clockwise are astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke Jr., two Apollo 17 CAPCOM; Donald K. Slayton, director of flight crew operations at MSC; Dr. Roco A. Petrone, Apollo program director, Office of Manned Space Flight, NASA HQ; and Ronald V. Blevins, an EVA-1 flight controller with General Electric. They are looking over a makeshift repair arrangement which uses lunar maps and clamps from the optical alignment telescope lamp, a repair suggestion made by astronaut Young. The suggestion was relayed to Cernan and Schmitt and the repair made at the beginning of EVA-2. The problem was solved satisfactorily.