Walk through the memories of NASA’s Apollo 17 mission to the moon and its commander, Eugene Cernane, who died last week.
Eugene Cernan - the last man walking on the moon. He was gone last week in his 82nd year of life. The naval pilot joined NASA in 1963 and remained at the agency for more than 10 years, completing three space flights. He is one of those who visited the earth’s satellite twice and one of 12 who walked on it. Here are some of the most memorable images of the last mission of Apollo 17 in 1972.
The mission launched aboard the powerful Saturn V rocket took place early in the morning of December 7, 1972. Eugene Cernan, a veteran of the Gemini program and the Apollo 10 lunar orbital mission, the pilot of the lunar module Harrison (Jack) Schmitt and Ron Evans were present on board. Apollo 17 was supposed to land in the Taurus-Littrow lunar valley and perform two geological tasks: collect mountain samples that are older than the rocks created by the impact in the nearby Sea of Rains and see if the volcano was active.
Apollo 17 is the sixth vehicle, which landed on the Moon, and the last, which captured the circulation of people. Although space agencies do not yet have clear plans for return, robotic development is still ongoing. In particular, scientists have found evidence of surface ice. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter also took pictures of missions, including Apollo 17.
Cernan salutes the American flag after landing safely on the moon on December 11, 1972. Cernan and Schmitt, the first astronaut scientist who flew into space, landed on the surface in the lunar module Challenger. Evans remained in lunar orbit in the command module America (now the module is on display at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston).
“I’m not going to go all the way to the moon a second time, relying only on a computer,” said Cernan in 2007. “The arrogance of a naval pilot is too great to allow it.”
Cernan is working on a moon rover - a transport vehicle used for the last three missions (Apollo 15, 16 and 17).
While the first missions relied on astronauts, the moon rover allowed to move more freely and move much further. Although NASA continued to closely monitor the supply of oxygen, and expected everything so that they could return even if the moon rover suddenly ceased to function.
On Apollo, 17Cernan accidentally tore off one of the buffers of the moon rover after hitting it with a hammer. “We needed to fix it,” he said in a 2008 interview. “Because the tail of the dust will rise. We took a few geological maps and glued everything together with duct tape. Then they took the clips from the flashlights and attached them to what was left of the wing. And that stopped the dust. ”
With a camera on his chest, Cernan was photographed next to the overhanging moon rock. He uses the gnomon. This is something like a photographic reference book that allows you to demonstrate the colors of moon stones, the scale of objects and the angle of the sun. In the biography of “The Last Man on the Moon,” 1999, Cernan wrote about Apollo’s strange programming time. “President Kennedy was ahead of time for decades and neatly accommodated everything in the 1960-1970s. Logic tells us that after Mercury and Gemini we had to build a shuttle, then an orbital station, and only then search for the Moon. ”
A tired Siernan is photographed after the second of three exits from the ship. Schmitt stood behind the camera, using a 70 mm Hasselblad (camera model). Three “lunar drifts” took 22 hours and yielded about 250 pounds of rock, which is still being analyzed by modern scientists.
“Science and technology brought me there. But none could explain how I felt then, ”said Cernan in 2007. - “You look at the Earth, majestically rotating on an axis. And you do not feel it, although you are there. ”
The Apollo spacecraft left the moon forever. The photo was taken by a remote control camera of a nearby lunar rover. Below it is the stage of descent. Cernan and Schmitt flew away on December 14, 1972, to reunite with a member of the Evans team in orbit.
The plate on the moon reads: “Here a man first explored the moon, December, 1972 AD er May the spirit of the world with which we come reflect on the life of all mankind. ” It is signed by Cernan, Schmitt, Evans, and also President Richard Nixon.
