The Last Lunar Landing | Apollo 17

Video from the channel Manned Space about Apollo 17, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 16:44. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A narrated documentary that follows the Apollo 17 mission from start to finish using NASA footage and audio: the night launch, the journey to the Moon, the landing of the lunar module Challenger in the Taurus-Littrow valley, the three surface excursions and the return to Earth.

Apollo 17 was the last flight of the Apollo programme and the only one with a night launch: it lifted off at 00:33 US Eastern time on 7 December 1972, and according to the video the glow was visible up to 500 miles along the East Coast. It was commanded by Eugene Cernan, who had already flown to the Moon on Apollo 10. Ronald Evans, the command module pilot, was flying his only spaceflight, and geologist Harrison Schmitt, the lunar module pilot, remains the only scientist to have walked on the Moon.

Shortly after launch, telemetry raised suspicion about a battery in the Saturn V's instrument unit, the rocket's brain built by IBM, but it turned out to be a false alarm. After trans-lunar injection, Evans photographed the full Earth. Once in lunar orbit, the command module was renamed America. Over about 75 hours on the surface, Cernan and Schmitt covered more than 22 miles with the rover and studied the Steno, Nansen, Shorty and Van Serg craters. At Shorty they found the orange soil, made up of tiny volcanic glass beads. Their second excursion, lasting 7 h 37 min, was the longest ever spent on the Moon. Before lifting off, they found the plaque fixed to one of the module's legs. On the way back, Evans went outside to retrieve film. The capsule splashed down in the Pacific after 12 days, 13 hours and 51 minutes, and helicopters from the USS Ticonderoga picked up the crew.