The Apollo 17 lunar module landed within 200 meters of the preferred landing point in a deep narrow valley called Taurus-Littrow. This valley is located in the mountainous highlands at the eastern rim of the Serenitatis basin, about 750 kilometers east of the the Apollo 15 landing site and about the same distance north of the Apollo 11 site. The Apollo 17 site is in a dark deposit between massifs of the southwestern Taurus Mountains and south of the crater Littrow. The valley floor is essentially flat with only a gentle incline.
"... there's some very subtle hummocky-like craters right in and around where we are. And there's not a lot of boulders laying on the surface, but there's a lot of what appear to be boulders that are covered up by some of the dark mantle."
Landing Site Selection
The landing site selected for Apollo 17 was in the Taurus-Littrow Valley on the eastern rim of Mare Serenitatis. The two primary objectives were obtaining samples of highland material that were older than the Imbrium impact and investigating the possibility of young, explosive volcanism in this
The Apollo 17 landing site (green cross) is located in the narrow valley of Taurus-Littrow along the rugged southeastern rim of the Serenitatis impact basin. These views (portions of Mapping Camera frames AS17-793 and 795) measure ~65 kilometers from top to bottom. North is up. This stereo pair has a vertical exaggeration of about 3. Topographic relief across this valley measures about 2750 meters, or roughly 1.5 times as deep as the Grand Canyon.
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