Apollo 17: Der letzte Schritt auf den Mond, aber nicht das Ende丨Apollo 17丨Mondforschung丨NASA

Video from the channel Geschichten der Wissenschaft about Apollo 17, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 34:23. Language: German. Video type: Documentary.

German-language documentary on Apollo 17, the last crewed mission to the Moon. It first introduces the three crew members and then follows the flight from launch to splashdown. It also describes the work on the lunar surface and devotes the second half to the mission's scientific legacy: the rock and dust samples, the radiation measurements and the influence they had, according to the narrator, on later exploration.

The mission lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in December 1972 aboard a Saturn V and was the last lunar flight of the Apollo programme. Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt descended on December 11 into the Taurus-Littrow valley, an area chosen for its geological interest. Meanwhile, Ronald Evans remained in lunar orbit in the command module. The documentary reviews each one's biography. Cernan was a naval aviator, born in Chicago in 1934, who died in 2017. Schmitt was a geologist with a doctorate from Harvard; he worked for the United States Geological Survey, was selected as an astronaut in 1965 and later became a senator for New Mexico. Evans was a naval pilot who remained with NASA after the flight and died in 1990.

With the lunar rover, the two astronauts covered about 35.7 km over three excursions and gathered close to 110 kg of rocks and soil. The video details the three days on the surface, from December 11 to 13, with trips of 5.4, 9.2 and 7.4 km, and the installation of scientific instruments, including radiation detectors. The lunar module docked again with the command module on December 14. The crew splashed down in the Pacific on December 19, after a mission of twelve days and thirteen hours. The final part discusses lunar dust, which is a health risk for astronauts and a basis for studying materials for future bases. It also covers helium-3 as a possible energy source. These are general-interest passages rather than data specific to the mission.