Apollo 17 marked the end of the Apollo program. When the mission was launched on December 7, 1972, public interest in space exploration had waned and the US government had shifted its focus to the Vietnam War. These and many other factors brought the program to an end, despite the fact that three more flights to Earth’s natural satellite were originally planned.
The spacecraft landed safely on the moon on December 11, 1972 , after launching from Earth four days earlier. The 11th and final mission of the United States’ Apollo program, and NASA’s sixth mission to put men on the moon, Apollo 17, was also the program’s only night launch, which began shortly after midnight.
The three-member crew consisted of Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt. Apollo 17 was the first mission to include a scientist in its crew. Geologist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt was one of the first six scientific astronauts selected in 1965 amid immense pressure from the National Academy of Sciences, which was concerned that only pilots would have the opportunity to walk on the Moon.
Astronaut Ronald Evans remained in orbit while Cernan and Schmitt spent three days on the lunar surface conducting extra-vehicular activity (moonwalks), during which they collected lunar samples and deployed scientific instruments. Schmitt’s participation in the lunar mission was, as we have seen, something remarkable for NASA, being the first scientist that NASA sent to the Moon.
As this was to be the last Apollo moon landing, special attention was paid to the landing and exploration sites. The decision was made to land in the Taurus-Littrow valley with the main objectives of: taking samples of the material from the oldest lunar mountain of the impact that formed Mare Imbrium – the second largest sea on the Moon – and investigating the possibility of relatively young volcanic activity in the same neighborhood.
The Taurus-Littrow Valley was selected because it offered the possibility of finding upland material on the north and south walls of the valley. The site also showed the possibility that several craters in the valley surrounded by dark material could be linked to volcanic activity.
Apollo 17 was the first and only lunar landing mission to perform a “traverse gravimeter experiment ” (TGE), built by the Draper Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and designed to provide relative gravity measurements at various locations during the mission moonwalks. The 26 measurements taken with the TGE during the mission’s three moonwalks provided scientific data on the geological substructure of the landing site and the surrounding vicinity.
In addition, it was the mission in which one of the most iconic photographs of the Earth was taken, known as the blue marble, because of the curious brightness that the sunlight produced in the astronauts’ camera.
Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt returned to Earth on December 19 after approximately 12 days. Apollo 17 broke several records set by previous flights, including the longest manned lunar landing flight, the longest total lunar surface extravehicular activities, the largest lunar sample return, and the longest time in lunar orbit.
After Apollo 17, additional Apollo spacecraft were used in the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project programs.
The legacy of Apollo 17
The 50th anniversary of Apollo 17 will take place in December 2022. The America command module is located at the Houston Space Center, near NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
Curiosity: The three astronauts -Cernan, Roland Evans- carried out three days of work on the surface, more than 22 hours in total. In the three outings on foot and with the explorer vehicle, more than seven hours of work, they traveled almost 36 kilometers and collected about 110 kilos of geological samples. Cernan and Schmitt set the longest workday in the history of the Moon, at seven hours and almost 37 minutes.
