APOLLO 17: ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS (1973, HD source) - NASA documentary
Video from the channel Retro Space HD about Apollo 17, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 29:01. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.
What it shows
A NASA documentary film about Apollo 17, the program's last crewed mission to the Moon. It introduces the crew: commander Eugene Cernan, the last Apollo astronaut to walk on the Moon; Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, the first geologist to do so; and Ronald Evans, pilot of the command module America, who worked from lunar orbit with a battery of experiments. It shows the launch, delayed by an automatic sequencer cutoff at T-30 s; docking with the lunar module Challenger; entry into lunar orbit on 10 December 1972; and the descent into the Taurus-Littrow valley. On the surface it shows the deployment of the lunar rover and the ALSEP experiment package, drilling to take samples and install probes, repairing a fender on the rover with a map and tape, and the discovery of orange soil in the Shorty crater. The film ends with the liftoff, Evans's spacewalk 170,000 miles from Earth to retrieve the film from the cameras, and the return on 19 December with nearly 250 pounds of lunar material.
When and where it was filmed
The footage is from the mission itself, from December 1972: the launch at Kennedy, the control rooms in Houston, where a team of scientists tracked and directed the EVAs, and the cameras aboard the spacecraft and on the lunar surface. NASA produced the film in 1973. It is presented in its original 4:3 format, with noise reduction and some color correction.
Context
The film takes its title from Newton's phrase about seeing further by standing on the shoulders of giants, and links the mission to the programs that followed. The first is Skylab, with three crews planned in 1973 for stays of 28, 56 and 56 days. Next, the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission with the Soviet Union, planned for 1975 to test a compatible docking system. Finally, the Space Shuttle, designed so that its most expensive parts would be reusable. It also covers the final ceremony of Cernan and Schmitt beside a rock and the plaque they left on Challenger's descent stage.