According to Bean's book, "Painting Apollo," Cernan said he wished he had put his daughter's name on the side of the rock. It showed the Apollo 17 crew working near a massive boulder they had encountered during their mission. Years later, Cernan was looking at a painting done by fellow astronaut Alan Bean. Next, he knelt and etched his daughter Tracy's initials - T D C - into the dust, according to his autobiography, "The Last Man on the Moon." Just before going back into the lunar module, Cernan drove the lunar rover roughly a mile away so that the video camera could photograph the takeoff the next day. The Apollo 17 mission commander checks out the rover prior to loadup. It turned out to be tiny bits of colored glass that likely came from a surface vent. Cernan joked in his autobiography that he feared his crewmate had "overdosed on rocks", but took a look despite his skepticism. The mission's greatest discovery came when Schmitt exclaimed that he had found orange regolith, or moon soil. Meanwhile, Ron Evans, the command module pilot, set a record for most time orbiting the moon.
With 22 hours and 6 minutes outside, Apollo 17 set the mark for longest extravehicular activity done by one mission on the surface of the moon. The arrogance of a pilot, particularly naval aviators, is too great to allow that to happen," Cernan quipped in a 2007 NASA oral interview.Ĭernan and Harrison Schmitt touched down safely on the moon to do three spacewalks while on the surface. "There's no way I'm going to go all the way to the moon, particularly for a second time, and let a computer land me on the moon. This time, he was ready to bring his spacecraft all the way – on pilot's terms, of course. The pilot's wayĬernan was eager to walk on the moon on Apollo 17, his next assignment his previous mission had come so close. "We've got our marbles," Stafford told Mission Control in relief. The startled crew fought to get the spacecraft under control, and succeeded in doing so within seconds. With Snoopy's guidance system inadvertently pointing the wrong way, the confused spacecraft began spinning above the surface. All went smoothly until Snoopy was preparing to head back to Charlie Brown. In the lunar module Snoopy, he and Tom Stafford skimmed within eight nautical miles on the moon to simulate a lunar landing. Though exhausted, Cernan completed many of his tasks and provided valuable information for future missions.Ĭernan next flew into space on Apollo 10 in 1969. Cernan was tasked to do one of the first American spacewalks, which ended up being immensely difficult as the spacecraft was not designed with enough handholds.
His first spaceflight was Gemini 9, which had an ambitious agenda. His experience earned him a spot in NASA's astronaut corps in October 1963. Cernan started his career as a basic flight trainee in the Navy, racking up hundreds of aircraft carrier landings and thousands of hours in the air on jet aircraft.
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