The Last Man on the Moon - Apollo 17 (SPACE DOCUMENTARY, NASA, Apollo Mission, History, Full Docu)

Video from the channel WeDocus - The World in Documentaries about Apollo 17, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 49:42. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary about Apollo 17, the last crewed mission of the Apollo program to the Moon, told largely by its three crew members: commander Gene Cernan, command module pilot Ron Evans and lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt. It combines their recollections with the mission's audio and footage, from the Saturn V's rollout to the pad to the splashdown, and closes with their reflections on humanity's future in space.

The testimonies place the mission at the tail end of a program being cut back: amid shifting political priorities, the Vietnam War and budget pressure, the Apollo 18, 19 and 20 missions were cancelled even though the hardware existed to fly them. Before Apollo 17, the five successful Moon landings had been crewed by test pilots trained in science; for this last opportunity, NASA decided to send a scientist, geologist Schmitt, who replaced another already-assigned astronaut. The chosen destination, the Taurus-Littrow valley on the Moon's northeastern rim, was considered a geologically very demanding site.

The night launch in December 1972 was halted 30 seconds before the end of the countdown because the launch computer failed to send the command to pressurize an oxygen tank; liftoff came about 2 hours and 40 minutes later. After two Earth orbits, the third stage, the S-IVB, reignited over Australia to head toward the Moon. The lunar module Challenger landed at Taurus-Littrow while the command module America remained in orbit. On the surface, the crew deployed the ALSEP experiment package, drilling to measure heat flow with a gravimeter that didn't work as planned; at Station 4 they discovered an unexpected orange soil, and at Station 6 they studied a large rock linked to the formation of the Serenitatis basin. A broken fender on the lunar rover was replaced with one improvised from maps and clamps. Before leaving, they read the plaque fixed to the lunar module's leg. According to Schmitt, the mission brought back about 250 pounds of samples, versus roughly 600 for the earlier missions combined. On the way home, Evans performed a spacewalk to retrieve the film from the cameras in the SIM bay. The closing section reviews the crew's later paths: Evans was backup command module pilot for the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz flight, and Schmitt went on to become a United States senator.