Lunar basalt 70017 Lunar basalt 70017 The Lunar basalt 70017 is a Moon rock gathered in 1972 by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on the Apollo 17 mission near their Apollo lunar lander from the valley of Taurus-Littrow on the moon and divided into 1.1 gram pieces. Lunar basalt 70017 is a Moon basalt that was last collected by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on the last manned Moon landing, Apollo 17. After gathering the basalt rock from the surface of the Moon the two astronauts made a speech referring to "the children of the world". They wished that parts of
Fallen Astronaut Space Museum requested and received a replica of the statue. Controversy soon followed, as Van Hoeydonck claimed a different understanding of the agreement made with the astronauts and attempted to sell up to 950 copies of the statue. He finally relented under pressure from NASA, which has a strict policy against commercial exploitation of the US government space program. Prior to his Apollo 15 lunar mission, astronaut David Scott met Belgian painter and printmaker Paul Van Hoeydonck at a dinner party. It was there agreed that Van Hoeydonck would create a small statuette for Scott to place on the Moon,