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Cernan's official Apollo 17 portrait.NASA
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The crew of Apollo 17, posing with LRV mockup in front of their launch vehicle.NASA
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Schmitt, Evans, and Cernan standing on pad 39A at the base of SA-512, the Saturn V that would take them to the Moon.NASA
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Launch vehicle SA-512 stands ready at Pad 39A in the days before liftoff.NASA
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Cernan, suited in LRV trainer, waves to a tour bus at KSC.NASA
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Cernan during a final suit fitting and check at ILC Dover in Delaware.NASA
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Cernan with his wife Barbara and daughter Tracy. At left is Dannette Sanders, a friend of Tracy's.NASA
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Cernan looks back at crewmate Ron Evans as Evans says goodbye to his wife. Cernan appears eager to board the transfer van to the pad.NASA
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Apollo 17 lifts off at 12:33 am EST, December 7, 1972. It was the penultimate launch of the Saturn V and the only Saturn V night launch.NASA
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Cernan salutes Old Glory at the Taurus-Littrow valley landing site of Apollo 17.NASA
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Earth is visible high in the sky behind Cernan.NASA
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Crewmate Harrison "Jack" Schmitt took this image of Cernan extracting a deep core sample. Apollo 17 accomplished more science than any other Apollo mission.NASA
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Cernan stands next to the Apollo 17 LRV.NASA
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In this photo by Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Jack Schmitt flops down into the LRV seat.NASA
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A beautiful long shot taken by Cernan, showing Schmitt and the LRV in the distance.NASA
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Taurus-Littrow valley and Apollo 17 landing site. Cernan barely visible near the LRV in the distant background.NASA
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Cernan next to Lunar Module Challenger, removing the protective cover over the commemorative plaque on the LM's strut. The plaque reads, "Here man completed his first explorations of the Moon December 1972, A.D. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind."NASA
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A tired and dirty post-EVA Cernan, back in Challenger.NASA
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Two photos stitched together, showing more of Challenger's interior. Cernan's and Schmitt's suits are stacked on top of the ascent engine cover at left. The LM had about as much usable space as a small closet.NASA
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Apollo 17 Command Module America splashes down in the south Pacific Ocean. Aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga conducts the recovery. LMP Jack Schmitt is being hoisted up in this image.NASA
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Cernan emerges from America to await his turn to board the chopper.NASA
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Cernan and crew aboard the Ticonderoga after recovery.NASA
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Cernan's hand-written notes about his final words on the Lunar surface. The note was scribbled on a blank cuff checklist page.NASA
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CM America today, as an exhibit at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.Lee Hutchinson
I was sitting with Apollo 7 veteran Walt Cunningham in his west Houston living room on Monday afternoon when his wife, Dot, stepped tentatively in. "I'm sorry for interrupting," she said. "But Gene's passed away."
She meant Eugene Cernan, the US Navy Captain who commanded Apollo 17 and the last person to walk on the Moon. He was 82 and had been ill for about six months.
We took a moment to process this. Six of NASA's 12 Apollo Moonwalkers were now dead. The other six are in their 80s or older. And for Cunningham, this was personal. Cernan served as back-up to Cunningham as the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 7, the first flight of the Apollo capsule. Cunningham sighed. "I guess that's the way it is," he said. "I'll be 85 in two months. I'm starting to face up to the fact that everybody I know is going to be gone soon, and probably me, too."
A patriot and pioneer
Born on March 14, 1934, Cernan was a Boy Scout, Purdue University engineer, and fighter pilot before joining NASA in 1963 as part of its third astronaut class. He flew the Gemini 9A mission to test orbital rendezvous, served as Lunar Module Pilot aboard the Apollo 10 that flew to within 15.6km of the Moon, and commanded the last human mission to the surface. "America has lost a patriot and pioneer who helped shape our country's bold ambitions to do things that humankind had never before achieved," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said Monday.
Cernan was never comfortable with the title "last man to walk on the Moon." But he couldn't escape it and even titled his autobiography, Last Man on the Moon. "Too many years have passed for me to still be the last man to have walked on the Moon," he wrote in the 1999 book. "Somewhere on Earth today is the young girl or boy, the possessor of indomitable courage, who will lift that dubious honor from me and take us back out there where we belong."
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Cernan sits in a boilerplate Gemini mockup during water egress training, April 1966.
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Suit adjustments for testing out the Astronaut Maneuvering Unit, the handheld device to assist Cernan with moving around during Gemini IX's planned EVA. February 1966.
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This photo (taken by Cernan) shows what he saw while standing in Gemini IX's cabin with the hatch open. June 1966.
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Gemini IX's Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ADTA) failed to properly open, preventing Gemini IX from docking with the target. The failure earned the ADTA the nickname "The Angry Alligator."
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A closer view of the "Angry Alligator" ADTA from Gemini IX's cockpit.
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Cernan in the cramped Gemini IX cockpit while in orbit. Gemini spacecraft had about as much usable crew space as the front seat of a 1960s-era Volkswagen Beetle. Cernan and crewmate Tom Stafford shared that space for three days.
Even in 1991, Cernan was already disappointed by the outward progress of human spaceflight. Reflecting on the lunar landings, he said, "I knew we wouldn't be back in ten years, but we're talking about as many as thirty-five or forty years. And that's a generation and a half. The kids who are in grammar school now are the people who are going to be taking those trips back to the Moon and on to Mars. So we've got a generation in there that we've left in limbo."
When are we going back?
Those grammar school students in 1991 are now in their mid-to-late 30s. It is not at all clear whether any of them will go back to the Moon, or Mars, or anywhere beyond low Earth orbit. Sure, NASA has a plan for a "Journey to Mars," but there's widespread recognition that this mission on paper is poorly funded and unlikely to succeed without substantially more money and commitment from Congress and the White House. Lunar landings, at best, might come toward the end of the 2020s. Mars? The late 2030s.
Even before Cernan came home from the Moon in 1972, the federal government had begun cutting funding for NASA from nearly 5 percent of the budget to less than 0.5 percent today. This level of funding has allowed the space agency to produce some momentous achievements, including the exploration of all the worlds in our Solar System and—with the Voyagers—beyond. NASA built the technically marvelous space shuttle and led construction of the International Space Station.
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Cernan's official Apollo 10 portrait.NASA
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The Apollo 10 crew in front of a water egress trainer boilerplate.NASA
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Cernan at far left during water egress training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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Apollo 10 Lunar Module Pilot John Young at right assists Command Module Pilot Cernan out of the water egress trainer.NASA
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The combined Apollo 10 Command Module/Service Module/Spacecraft Lunar Adapter stack being mated with the S-IVB stage in the Vehicle Assembly Building. Note engineers standing inside the S-IVB for scale.NASA
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Cernan catches a catnap during the Apollo 10 suit-up as mission commander John Young chats with Chief Astronaut Deke Slayton.NASA
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Launch Vehicle SA-505 powers into orbit on May 18, 1969, with exhaust from the first stage's five F1 engines stretching for more than a thousand feet. The launch vehicle itself is 363 feet long, or about 110 meters.NASA
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Image of Earth taken after Apollo 10's Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver. North is to frame right; northern Africa is visible at center.NASA
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Apollo 10 Command Module Charlie Brown, as seen from Lunar Module Snoopy. The CM is covered in a layer of protective Mylar to help reflect heat, creating its distinctive chrome-like appearance.NASA
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Apollo 10 at splashdown.NASA
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With the crew out, the helicopter prepares to recover Charlie Brown.
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LMP Gene Cernan, CDR Tom Stafford, and LMP John Young prepare to step off the helicopter onto recovery ship USS Princeton on May 26, 1969.
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After landing, the crew of Apollo 10 meets with the crew of Apollo 11 to compare notes. Two months later, Apollo 11 would land humans on the Moon for the first time.NASA
But as Cernan recognized, it is one thing to have humans explore the vicinity of our home planet and quite another to send them into the great beyond. "There is a difference between a space program that takes you to 300 miles away from your home planet and another one that sets you out on a voyage a quarter million miles away," he said. "There are significant differences, both technologically and philosophically. And, quite frankly, I'm a little disappointed in us, at this time, to know that we're really not much further along than we were back then."
Perhaps we as a country can now, finally, dedicate ourselves to a sustainable, coherent plan to send humans back into deep space. This will require funding, yes, but equally important is common ground on what the aims of human exploration ought to be. NASA must harness the vast gains now being made in commercial space, both in terms of lower costs and reusability. With Cernan's passing we are reminded (and hopefully embarrassed) how very, very long it has been since humans have left low Earth orbit.
Let us hope we can return to the Moon before all our original Moonwalkers are gone.
Listing image by NASA
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