I have painted Astronaut Dave Scott headed our way with camera in hand. We can tell it's Dave, because the Apollo 15 Commander has a red stripes on his suit and helmet. He and Jim Irwin have just parked their lunar rover near the lip of Hadley rille, a one-mile-wide, thousand-foot-deep canyon -like gorge that meanders 70 miles across the lunar surface. Dave is planning to take some detailed photos of the far wall. This time, they parked their rover on a gentle slope. At a previous stop, Dave reported, "Once we got off the rover, it has a tendency to slide down the mill sideways. Jim and I took turns holding it so it wouldn't depart."

The remote controlled television camera looks our way, beaming its signal back to Earth, some 240,000 miles above us, using the fold-mesh high-gain antenna. Dave is carrying a Hasselblad camera quipped with a powerful telephoto lens. Dave said, "The 500-millimeter lens will bring us much closer. With the detail that will exist on the photographs, we will be able to clearly see the structural formations on the far side of the rille."

Later, Dave reported, "The 500-millimeter worked fine. I used my helmet shield as a base to steady it. I noticed some light scratches in the gold coating, but it didn't really bother me."