Apollo 17: La última misión de la NASA a la Luna

Video from the channel Cosmic - Space Documentaries about Apollo 17, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 51:58. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A documentary that reconstructs the Apollo 17 mission almost entirely from the original communications between the crew and Houston mission control and from mission footage. It follows the journey from start to finish: the landing of the lunar module Challenger in the Taurus-Littrow valley, Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt's surface excursions with the lunar rover, Ron's work in orbit aboard the command module America, the liftoff from the Moon, docking, the return trip and splashdown.

The piece opens with the speech in which President Kennedy set the goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade, along with footage from earlier missions: the reading of Genesis on Apollo 8, the Apollo 11 landing and the Apollo 13 failure. Cernan explains that the mission aimed to build on what had been learned on Apollo 15 and 16, and Schmitt, a geologist, describes how the astronauts were trained in field geology by top-level professors. The plaque the crew unveils on the lunar module's landing gear presents it as the end of humanity's first exploration of the Moon, in December 1972.

On the surface, the crew repairs a lunar rover fender torn off by a hammer blow and visits stations such as Shorty crater, Camelot, the base of the North Massif and Van Serg crater. At Shorty, Schmitt discovers orange-colored soil, a band about a meter wide that requires digging a trench. Schmitt explains sampling with a scoop and with core tubes up to 70 centimeters deep, a depth at which, as learned on Apollo 15, the temperature stabilizes at around 20 degrees below zero and acts as a cold trap for volatile elements. Cernan notes that in one day they covered 19.3 kilometers. Before leaving, they dedicate a rock to the countries of the world; already on the way back, Ron goes outside the command module. The documentary ends with reentry, the opening of the three main parachutes and splashdown, followed by cheers in mission control.