Space: The Final [Archaeological] Frontier

Archaeology Magazine, Volume 57 Number 6, November/December 2004

by P.J. Capelotti

Illustrations by James Jean

http://www.archaeology.org/0411/etc/space.html

To quote:

In 1999, a company called Lunacorp proposed a robotic lunar rover mission beginning at the site of Tranquility Base and rumbling across the Moon from one archaeological site to another, from the wreck of the Ranger 8 probe and a Surveyor spacecraft to Apollo 17's landing site and a lost Soviet Lunakhod rover. The mission, which would leave more than 600 miles of tread marks at some of the most famous sites from the history of exploration, was promoted as a form of theme-park entertainment. In addition to the threat from profit-seeking corporations, scholars cite other potentially destructive forces such as wanton souvenir hunting as well as uncontrolled or unmonitored scientific sampling, like that which has occurred in explorations of remote polar regions.