This Sunday, NASA’s Orion capsule will return to Earth after a three-week trip around the Moon. The unmanned spacecraft is part of the mission Artemis I, a grand uncrewed test to land a woman and a non-white person on the Moon in 2025. It will splash down in the Pacific on the same day that humanity last landed on the Moon 50 years ago. From the apollo 17 no one has left a mark on the lunar surface again. Budget cuts by subsequent US administrations made this impossible.
The Apollo 17 crew consisted of Commander Eugene Cernan (1934-2017), command module pilot Ronald Evans (1933 – 7 1990) and the pilot of the lunar module Harrison ‘Jack’ Schmitt (1935), geologist trained to fly into space.
The mission lifted off after midnight on December 7, 1972 aboard a Saturn V rocket that turned night into day. Four days later, on December 11, Evans was orbiting the Moon, while Schmitt and Cernan expertly landed the Lunar Module Challenger in a narrow valley called Taurus-Littrow, just 100 meters from the exact intended spot without any problem. Cernan told Houston that they were low on fuel, but it was a false alarm: only half of what they had for the descent had been consumed.
The two astronauts spent seven hours over three consecutive days exploring the craters and rocks of the lunar landscape. They drove their lunar rover – they even had to make a new fender out of maps and tape after a little accident with a hammer – they carried out scientific experiments and collected more than a hundred kilos of rocks that, among other things, would allow scientists to deduce that the volcanic material originated on the Moon. One of the last unsealed samples, collected in the dark zone of the Moon, was opened last March. But for the general public, the most remembered contribution would be an iconic photograph of the Earth, the ‘blue marble’, taken 45,000 km away.
The fate of the man of tomorrow
Before concluding the third and final lunar walk, Cernan said: “The challenge of the United States of today has forged the destiny of the man of tomorrow.” And he added: «When we leave the Moon, we will leave as we came and, God willing, as we will return, with peace and hope for all humanity. The commander knelt down and carved his daughter’s initials into the moondust before saying goodbye to the Moon. The capsule carrying the astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on December 19, ending the Apollo program.
Cernan’s words are not as famous as those of Neil Armstrong in July 1969, but today they make more sense than ever. He was convinced that lunar exploration would continue. «We will return (to the Moon) to be three, six months … And we will live and work on Mars. It is very likely that we will colonize Mars. We could do it perfectly. What is impossible today?», He predicted in an interview given to this newspaper in 2009. «I will not be the last to step on it… In 2015, 2018 or 2025, that is the least of it. The important thing is that it will happen,” he predicted.
Just a few hours after splashdown, also in the Pacific, the Artemis I mission, so far successful, is about to become the first step towards fulfilling the prediction of the last man to set foot on the Moon.