Apollo 17 (Spacecraft)

Variant names

Dates:

Active 1972-12-07

Active 1972-12-19

Biographical notes:

Apollo 17 was the eleventh manned space mission in the NASA Apollo program and was the sixth and last manned mission to date to land on the Moon. It was the first night launch and the final lunar landing mission of the Apollo program. Its crew consisted of Eugene Cernan, commander; Ron Evans, command module pilot; and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, lunar module pilot.

The landing site for this mission was on the southeastern rim of the Mare Serenitatis, in the southwestern Montes Taurus. This was a dark mantle between three high, steep massifs, in an area known as the Taurus-Littrow region. Pre-mission photographs showed boulders deposited along the bases of the mountains, which could provide bedrock samples. The area also contained a landslide, several impact craters, and some dark craters which could be volcanic. A J-class mission, featuring the Lunar Rover, they conducted three lunar surface excursions, lasting 7.2, 7.6 and 7.3 hours. The mission returned 110.5 kg (243.6 lb) of samples from the Moon. The crew roamed for 34 km (21 miles) through the Taurus-Littrow valley in their rover, discovered orange-colored soil, and left the most comprehensive set of instruments in the ALSEP on the lunar surface. On this mission the astronauts took a famous photograph of the earth known as "The Blue Marble". Their mission was the last in the Apollo lunar program.

The Command module is currently on display at NASA's Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas. The lunar module impacted the Moon on December 15, 1972 at 06:50:20.8 UT (1:50 AM EST) at 19.96 N, 30.50 E.