Madrid. On December 19, 1972, the mission returned to Earth. apollo 17, with the last trio of astronauts to set foot on the Moon, a milestone that is now 50 years old.
The crew was made up of the commander and veteran of the mission Gemini 9 Y apollo 10 Eugene A. Cernan; lunar module pilot and geologist Harrison H. Schmitt, called Jack, and command module pilot Ronald E. Evans.
Cernan was the last human being to set foot on the surface of the Moon in the Taurus-Littrow valley (near the Taurus Mountains, next to the Littrow crater), on the border between the Sea of Tranquility and the Sea of Serenity. The descent module challenger landed at 21.2ºN 30.6ºE (Taurus Littrow area) carrying Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt as crew members.
During their stay on lunar soil, they traveled 35 kilometers on foot and in the robot, in which they collected 110 kilos of lunar rock samples, reports NASA. They left a surface gravimeter installed to analyze the attraction that the Sun and the Earth exert on our satellite, a device to measure the mass, speed and frequency of meteorites falling and erosion of the material ejected by the impact, a device to determine the seismic profile based on explosive charges, as well as a meter of the lunar atmospheric composition near the surface.
Ronald B. Evans remained in lunar orbit in the command module America for a period of 147 hours and 48 minutes until his companions returned in the ascent module, according to Wikipedia.
This mission broke several records: longest stay on the Moon with a total of almost 75 hours; longest period on the lunar surface without interruption (7 hours and 37 minutes), as well as maximum exploration time with 22 hours and 5 minutes. They landed successfully in the Pacific Ocean on December 19, 1972, after a flight of 301 hours, 51 minutes and 59 seconds.
With this flight the project ended Apollo (who managed to place 12 men on the Moon out of a total of 21 who managed to orbit it).
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