Apolo 17: El Último Viaje a la Luna, Pero No es el Fin丨Apolo 17丨Exploración Lunar丨NASA
Video from the channel Las historias de la ciencia about Apollo 17, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 26:23. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.
What it's about
A Spanish-language explainer documentary that covers the Apollo 17 mission in three parts: its three crew members, the flight timeline, and the mission's scientific legacy. The second half is devoted to possible applications of its findings and to the future of Moon and Mars exploration.
Historical context
The commander, Eugene Cernan, was born in Illinois in 1934 and was a US Navy aviator before joining NASA. He was the last man to walk on the Moon and died in 2017. Harrison Schmitt, the lunar module pilot, was born in 1935 in New Mexico and held a PhD in geology from Harvard. He was the only scientist among the Apollo astronauts who reached the Moon and later became a senator for New Mexico. Ronald Evans, the command module pilot and a former Navy pilot, stayed in lunar orbit; he retired from NASA in 1977 and died in 1990 of a heart problem.
The mission launched on 7 December 1972 on the last flight of a Saturn V. On 11 December, Cernan and Schmitt landed with the Challenger in the Taurus-Littrow region, chosen for its geological interest. On 14 December they redocked with the command module, leaving the rover on the surface. The crew splashed down in the Pacific on 19 December, after a mission lasting 12 days and 13 hours, and were picked up by the US Navy.
Key facts
Across three moonwalks, the astronauts covered 35.7 km with the lunar rover and gathered about 110 kg of rocks and soil. According to the video, the samples include basalts and calcium-rich pyroxenes pointing to past volcanic activity and a layered crust. Fine, sharp lunar dust also poses a health risk to astronauts. From there, the video connects the mission to radiation protection, the design of future bases, and the use of lunar resources such as oxygen or helium-3. It closes with the Artemis II programme and Mars as the next goal.