Apollo Missions Training in Hawaii

This 1971 image shows Apollo 17 astronauts, Harrison (Jack) Schmitt, left, and an unidentified man, training with the lunar roving vehicle on the Big Island of Hawaii. (NASA/AP)

NASA has released photos from the early 1970s show astronauts from Apollo missions 13 through 17 taking a spin in the "moon buggy" and scooping up dirt on the Big Island of Hawaii.

The Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems, a Hawaii state agency, is displaying the photos at its Hilo headquarters. Rob Kelso, the agency's executive director, found the images at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Astronauts from Apollo missions 13 through 17 trained in Hawaii as did some back up crews, Kelso said.

Some training was on Mauna Kea volcano, where glacial runoff crushed and refined rock into powder. Astronauts also trained on recent lava flows.

Today, robots are tested on the Big Island for moon and Mars missions.

In recent years, engineers have tested technology to pull oxygen out of the island's dirt, which is volcanic basalt like the Martian and lunar soil. Future missions could use this technology to extract oxygen from the land instead of taking it along. The oxygen could be used for breathing, to make fuel or for other purposes.