- 3776 - MOON - Apollo mission in 1972? It has been 50 years since astronauts last launched to the moon. “Apollo 17” mission lifted off on December 7, 1972, sending Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt and Ronald Evans toward Earth's biggest satellite. The trio arrived in orbit around the moon three days later.
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- Evans remained in lunar orbit aboard the mission's command module, named “America“. Cernan and Schmitt took the lunar module Challenger to the surface, touching down on the southeastern rim of the moon's Mare Serenitatis ("Sea of Serenity") on December 11.
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- Schmitt, a geologist, became the first scientist ever to walk on the moon. He and Cernan spent a record-setting 75 hours on the lunar surface. During that time, the duo set up or performed 10 different scientific experiments, snapped more than 2,000 photos and collected 243 pounds of soil and rock to bring home to Earth. That sample haul included a 4.2 billion-year-old stone whose characteristics suggest that the moon once had a global magnetic field, as Earth still does.
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- Cernan and Schmitt knew they'd be the last-ever Apollo moonwalkers, as NASA was beginning to shift its focus toward long-term crewed stays in Earth orbit. So, before Challenger lifted off from the lunar surface on December 14, the two astronauts revealed a plaque affixed to the module.
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- "Here man completed his first exploration of the moon, December 1972 A.D. May the spirit of peace in which he came be reflected in the lives of all mankind."
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- That timeline for our next Moon visit is dependent on the first two “Artemis” missions going well. Artemis 2 is scheduled to launch astronauts around the moon in 2024. Artemis 1 is currently underway; it launched an uncrewed Orion capsule atop a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on November 16, 2022.
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- The SLS performed well that day, and Orion has been notching milestones like clockwork. The capsule arrived in lunar orbit on Nov.ember 25, departed on December 1 and began heading back toward Earth via an engine burn during a close flyby of the moon on December 5.
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- Orion is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast on December 11, the same day that Cernan and Schmitt landed in the Mare Serenitatis.
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- The Apollo 17 mission's splashdown came eight days after that lunar landing; Cernan, Schmitt and Evans returned to Earth on December 19, 1972.
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- Apollo 17 was the first mission to include a scientist in its crew. Geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt was one of the first six scientist-astronauts selected in 1965 amid immense pressure to do so from the National Academy of Sciences, which was worried that only test pilots would get the opportunity to walk on the moon.
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- When it came time to select the final crew, Schmitt was chosen over Joe Engle, who was a backup pilot for Apollo 14 and would have been next in the rotation to fly under ordinary conditions. The usual procedure was for an astronaut to back up a mission and then fly as prime astronaut on the third mission after his backup. Crewmates Ron Evans and Eugene Cernan were upset for Engle. However, they were pleased with the capabilities Schmitt, a geologic trainer for other moon-bound astronauts, showed on the job.
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- Evans, the command module pilot, was on his first mission to space. He was on combat duty in Vietnam in April 1966 when he found out he was selected as an astronaut. Evans had not only flown in combat but was also a combat pilot instructor.
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- Mission Cmdr. Cernan, a former U.S. Navy pilot, had faced many obstacles in space. On his first flight, Gemini 9 in 1966, he did a spacewalk that exhausted him because there weren't enough handholds to perform his work in microgravity. On his second flight, Apollo 10 in 1969, the lunar module briefly spun unpredictably as Cernan and crewmate Tom Stafford did a practice descent to the surface. He was a seasoned pilot and felt ready to command his crew on the most challenging Apollo mission yet.
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- With the later Apollo missions so focused on science, and with a geologist on board for Apollo 17, much consideration went into choosing the lunar valley called Taurus-Littrow as Apollo 17's destination. The geologic variety of that valley tilted the decision to the location. Points of interest to scientists in Taurus-Littrow included Shorty Crater, believed to hold evidence of past volcanic vents, and several large boulders spotted in photographs taken by the Apollo 15 crew.
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- Cernan's and Schmitt's first major challenge came when Cernan accidentally broke a wheel fender on their lunar rover. After that, abrasive moon dust showered the astronauts as they drove around the surface. Cernan made a partial repair with some duct tape, joking he would like a "mending award." The next day, he and Schmitt taped some maps in place of the fender to better fix the problem.
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- The astronauts also deployed several scientific instruments, most notably a traverse gravimeter. The astronauts carried the instrument on the rover and took it out to several sites to measure the relative gravity, which gave scientists an idea about the lunar substructure.
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- In lunar orbit, Evans made observations of the surface and kept mission control entertained by joking about how much he stank because he had not taken a shower in several days.
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- As Cernan and Schmitt worked near the rim of Shorty Crater on the second day, Schmitt exclaimed that he could see orange soil. In Cernan's autobiography, he said he feared Schmitt "has been up here too long and has overdosed on rocks."
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- But when Cernan clambered over to take a look, he, saw the orange soil, too. Later examination of samples of that soil taken back to Earth showed that the rocks were tiny spheres of colored glass that probably came from a volcanic vent.
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- After one more day of racing the clock to do all the science they could, the lunar crew packed their gear and prepared to climb into Challenger for the last time. Alone on the surface, Cernan gave a short speech, concluding;
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- "I'd just like to record that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. ... Godspeed, the crew of Apollo 17."
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- Evans got a chance to do a quick spacewalk on the way back to Earth, retrieving some film canisters mounted outside America. The crew splashed down on December 19 in the South Pacific Ocean.
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- Apollo 17's astronauts spent a record 22 hours performing extravehicular activities on the moon. The astronauts drove about 21 miles in the lunar rover and brought back 108 kilograms of lunar rocks.
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- The “Artemis” program is a renaming of several earlier activities NASA was already undertaking to return humans to the moon. These were mandated by President Trump's Space Policy Directive 1, which tasked the agency with focusing on missions to the moon. In 2019, vice president Mike Pence set an ambitious deadline to land humans at the lunar south pole by 2024.
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December 8, 2022 MOON - Apollo mission in 1972? 3776
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