51 years ago today, Apollo 14 came to a successful close. This is the Apollo 14 plate from the lunar module simulator (LMS) showing the landing target site for the mission. The LM simulator showed images of the moon in the windows generated by a camera flying over this detailed surface. It may be the only surviving plate from the Apollo program.
From Lunar Legacies: “The plate is made of modeling paste over contoured fiberglass and contains an exact high-relief replica of the lunar surface at the Apollo 14 landing site, the surface over which the simulator camera panned over to simulate a lunar surface approach and landing. Using various lighting and filtering techniques, this plate was made to look like the actual landing site with the expected lighting conditions and view for the astronauts looking out the LM simulator windows. The plate shows the landmark craters Doublet and Triplet used by the Apollo 14 crew to determine their landing target. There are various small nicks and scuffs, mostly from the camera ramming the plate after a power blip in the LMS, and the plate weighs about 10-12 pounds. This plate was one of several used in the Simulator for training, and is very possibly the only one salvaged after the Apollo program.”
I wonder if the plaster simulator plates affected the astronaut’s expectations. Here’s what some said when first seeing the moon in 3D
• Apollo 10 Tom Stafford: “O shit John! It looks like a big plaster-of-paris cast.” and later “Shit, baby; we have arrived. It’s a big grey plaster-of-paris thing.”
• Apollo 11 Mike Collins: “Yes the moon is there, boy, in all of its splendor. It’s a plaster-of-paris grey to me.”
An artifact from the Future Ventures’ 🚀 Space Collection.
Compared to the photo above, the shadows are different, and you can see how the lighting changes the prominence of certain valleys.
"Dynamic out-the-window scenes are provided through an infinity-optics display system during the simulated flights. A five-ton system of lenses, mirrors, and mounts made up the visual display system attached to the LMS crew station. The heart of the simulator was a crew station that resembled in all details the actual spacecraft. The landing and ascent model generates the lunar surface’s simulated views from approximately 8,000 feet almost to touchdown. And are transmitted to the visual display system through high-resolution television. The images are available to either forward or the window of the LMS crew station." — detailed 
Apollo Astronauts would sleep overnight inside the LMS to prepare three-day stays on the Moon. The crew of Apollo 14 trained together for 19 months after assignment to the mission, longer than any other Apollo crew at that point.
It looks fantastic in a black shadow box. The texture and topography just pop. Passersby thought it was an art piece, so I hung it between a couple Pilat paintings of Apollo artifacts, like the flown 
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