Today in history: The return of the last Apollo Moon mission
Since Neil Armstrong stepped out of Apollo 11 in July 1969, a total of 12 men had walked on the Moon.
December 14, 1972 saw the first phase of humankind’s active exploration of the Moon come to an end when Apollo 17’s lunar module left the lunar surface.
Since Neil Armstrong stepped out of Apollo 11 in July 1969, a total of 12 men had walked on the Moon.
While on the moon, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt engaged in three moonwalks for a total of 22 hours and 2 minutes.
Cernan and Schmitt completed their third lunar walk after a short ceremony in which they bade farewell to the Moon and unveiled a small commemorative plaque at the Taurus-Littrow valley.
Commander Cernan and Dr Schmitt, the first trained geologist in space, gathered more material than ever before, spent longer on the surface and drove further away from the landing craft than in any previous Apollo mission.
Although Apollo 17 marked the end of US missions to the Moon, NASA continued to develop space exploration.
More recently, space exploration has focused on unmanned missions to Mars and beyond, and on the construction of the International Space Station.
In January 2004, US President George Bush, proposed that American astronauts return to the Moon by 2020 as the launching point for missions further into space.
Information sourced from: South African History Online.
