Boy, here they come at last. Thirty-one long months I've been resting just inside this unremarkable, 656-foot-diameter crater on the Ocean of Storms. All this time, I've had to endure the searing 225-degree heat of the lunar day and the chilling minus 243-degree lunar nights. It hasn't been fun. After all, I was sent here to see if the ground was firm enough to support human beings who would come several years later. Project Apollo it was called.

I see by my reflection in your visors that I've become rather dusty since the engineers packed me on top of an Atlas Centaur and blasted me off to the Moon. They said I only had one day, one lunar day (14 twenty-four hour Earth days) to complete my mission: look around with my television, dig trenches with my scoop, perform a few soil bearing and impact tests, and radio my findings back to Earth. Well, I did it superbly if I do say so myself. I took 6315 pictures with my television, dug four trenches, and performed twenty bearing and impact tests.

Now I'm ready for my trip back to our blue-and-white planet. I know I'm too big and heavy for your spacecraft, but my scoop and television camera should fit on board nicely. I'll always remember that on November 20, 1969, C. Conrad and A. Bean rescued me from this lonely, dry, and dusty place and took at least part of me back home.

Curtis Roos, who commissioned this painting, has provided
additional information,
including photographs of a model that Alan Bean used to create scene.