Index is a feature on Earth's

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

, a crater in the Hadley–Apennine region. Astronauts David Scott and

James Irwin James Benson Irwin (March 17, 1930 – August 8, 1991) was an American astronaut, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and a United States Air Force Aviator, pilot. He served as Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 15, the fourth human lunar landin ...

landed the Lunar Module ''Falcon'' northwest of it in 1971, on the

Apollo 15 Apollo 15 (July 26August 7, 1971) was the ninth crewed mission in the Apollo program and the fourth Moon landing. It was the first List of Apollo missions#Alphabetical mission types, J mission, with a longer stay on the Moon and a greate ...

mission, but they did not visit it. They intended to land closer to Index, but actually landed next to Last crater. Index is the southernmost of a line of four craters which were used by the astronauts as landmarks during descent to the surface. The other three are called ''Luke'', ''Mark'', and ''Matthew'', after three of the four major

Gospel Gospel originally meant the Christianity, Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the second century Anno domino, AD the term (, from which the English word originated as a calque) came to be used also for the books in which the message w ...

s of the Bible. They were not allowed to call the crater ''John'' due to the fact that atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair had sued NASA for astronauts reading from Genesis during Apollo 8.Landing at Hadley
, Apollo 15 Lunar Surface Journal, comment of David Scott The name ''Index'' was formally adopted by the IAU in 1973, but the other three crater names were not.

External links

Apollo 15 Traverses
Lunar Photomap 41B4S4(25)

References

{{reflist Impact craters on the Moon