The
Ranger 7 lunar probe impacted Mare Cognitum at the conclusion of its picture-taking mission.
Surveyor 3 and
Apollo 12 landed near its northern shore. The outcrop of the
Fra Mauro formation, where
Apollo 14 landed, is also located near Mare Cognitum.
Statio Cognitum descent stage of
Apollo 12,
Surveyor 3, and other equipment and local craters are labeled (click to enlarge). The astronauts' footprints are still visible. of Surveyor 3 and Apollo 12, with astronaut
Pete Conrad and the
Intrepid lander and S-band antenna in the background, in a first ever
visit of a separate mission beyond
Low Earth Orbit On November 19, 1969, astronauts
Pete Conrad and
Alan Bean landed
Apollo 12's
Lunar Module within walking distance of
Surveyor 3, which had been on the Moon since 1967. Named "Statio Cognitum" the site's closeness to its intended target demonstrated
NASA's capability of precise lunar landings. The location also provided a relatively smooth Mare surface and a proximity to the lunar equator, thus ensuring relative ease of access from the standpoint of fuel consumption. Geologically, the astronauts noted the amount of glass contained in the
regolith and present at the bottoms of shallow craters at the site, as well as lighter-colored regolith material that geologists later determined to be
ejecta from
Copernicus crater. (ALSEP), with the
Intrepid lander and the S-band
High Gain Antenna in the background Overall, Statio Cognitum and the surrounding area appears to have a slightly more red coloration from lunar orbit than Tranquility Base (which geologists later found to be the result of less
titanium in the Apollo 12 rocks) and to have fewer craters overall than Tranquility Base; because of this, geologists suspected the site chosen for Apollo 12 contained younger rocks than those of the Apollo 11 site, and this was confirmed by the samples returned by Apollo 12. These samples consisted of more
basalts and fewer
breccias than the Apollo 11 samples and the basalts are about 500 million years younger than those from Tranquility base, the latter of which geologists estimate to be about 3.6 to 3.8 billion years old. The differing ages of the basalts collected on Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 demonstrate that the volcanic activity that formed the
lunar mare did not occur all at once across the lunar surface, but rather took place at different times at different locations. ==See also==