Apollo 17 was the eleventh manned space mission in the NASA Apollo program. It was the first night launch of a U.S. human spaceflight and the sixth and final lunar landing mission of the Apollo program. The mission was launched at 12:33 a.m. EST on December 7, 1972, and concluded on December 19. It remains the most recent manned moon landing and the most recent manned flight beyond low Earth orbit. It also broke several records set by previous fl...
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Apollo 17 was the eleventh manned space mission in the NASA Apollo program. It was the first night launch of a U.S. human spaceflight and the sixth and final lunar landing mission of the Apollo program. The mission was launched at 12:33 a.m. EST on December 7, 1972, and concluded on December 19. It remains the most recent manned moon landing and the most recent manned flight beyond low Earth orbit. It also broke several records set by previous flights, including longest manned lunar landing flight; longest total lunar surface extravehicular activities; largest lunar sample return, and longest time in lunar orbit.
Former X-15 pilot Joe Engle had trained extensively with Cernan and Evans for lunar exploration as the backup LMP on Apollo 14. This came with the expectation that the entire crew would rotate up to prime crew for Apollo 17, but once it became clear that this would be the last lunar flight, the scientific community pressed NASA to select a scientist-astronaut to land on the...
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