NavList:

And of course, no discussion about land navigation using sun compasses would be complete without one of the most out-of-this-world uses for such a device: http://www.spaceartifactsarchive.com/2015/11/working-hand-in-hand-the-sun-compass-and-the-overlay-map.html

On the Apollo 15 flight to the moon, they had with them for the first time, a Lunar Rover to help them get around on the surface. It was so good that it could easily take them miles away from the Lunar Module - which would be a big problem if it broke down and they had to hoof it. The previous flight had shown how difficult it was to navigate by just using a map, so somebody at JSC came up with a simple but ingenious solar compass tailored to the landmarks in the area.

Because of a screw up by mission control, they were not all that certain about the actual position of their landing site, so they first used it to figure that out (they were close enough to not change any of their plans)  and they subsequently kept it with them during their travels as a backup navigation device.

Paul Dolkas

From: NavList@fer3.com [mailto:NavList@fer3.com] On Behalf Of Gary LaPook
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2016 12:14 AM
To: paul@dolkas.net
Subject: [NavList] Re: Celestial position-finding on land