One of the perks of working on the Moon is always being able to find a good parking spot.

This image shows Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt standing below a boulder called “Tracy’s Rock”, with the lunar rover parked in the background. Schmitt is carrying a gnomon, a marked rod on a tripod that indicates vertical reference and length in photos. The date was December 13, 1972.

Trained as a geologist before becoming a NASA astronaut and joining the Apollo team, Jack Schmitt is the second-to-last person to have walked on the moon (last is fellow Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan) and most likely took one of the most famous photos of the Earth from space – and most widely distributed photos ever – “The Blue Marble”.

So when someone tells you you don’t know Jack Schmitt about the Moon, you can honestly say “not many people do.” 😉

This image is a composite of several photos from the original Hasselblad scans by Kipp Teague. Some details are misaligned and fudged to splice together nicely, but the general scale of everything is pretty close. I liked the comparative size of Schmitt to the big lunar boulder and rover in the distance. The original images and more can be found at the Apollo Image Gallery.

Image credit: NASA