Apollo 17: Why Did America Cease Moon Landing Operations? | Secrets of the Last Lunar Landing

Video from the channel Spark about Apollo 17, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 48:02. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary about Apollo 17, the last Moon landing of the Apollo program, told through the memories of its three crew members: commander Eugene Cernan, command module pilot Ron Evans and lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt, a trained geologist. It combines later interviews with footage from the mission and from communications with flight control.

NASA had planned missions through Apollo 20 and had the hardware for them, but the political shift under the Nixon administration and Congress, with the Vietnam War in the foreground, led to the cancellation of the final flights; Apollo 18, to which Schmitt had been assigned, was cut during Apollo 15's training. Pressure not to close the program without sending a scientist to the Moon led Deke Slayton to replace an astronaut already assigned with Schmitt. The chosen site, the Taurus-Littrow valley, was considered a particularly demanding geological location.

The night launch took place in December 1972 to get the desired lighting for the landing; the countdown stopped at T-minus 30 seconds due to a wiring fault in the launch computer that prevented an oxygen tank from being pressurized. The lunar module Challenger landed at Taurus-Littrow while the command module America remained in orbit. The crew deployed an ALSEP experiment package more complex than on previous missions, though the poorly designed long-period gravimeter took up a good part of the first excursion. At station 4 they found an unexpected orange soil, and at station 6 they studied a large boulder linked to the Serenitatis basin. Cernan repaired a rover fender with maps and clamps, read the plaque commemorating the end of the program's lunar exploration, and, on the way back, Evans went outside to retrieve the film from the instrument bay cameras. The documentary closes with the later careers of the three astronauts.