Apollo 17 landed in the Taurus-Littrow valley on 11 December 1972, with Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, the only professional geologist to walk on the Moon. They spent three days on the surface, driving the lunar rover for 35 km and collecting 110 kg of samples, including orange volcanic soil. On 14 December Cernan climbed back into the module, the last person to leave the lunar surface. No human has gone beyond low Earth orbit since. The crew took the 'Blue Marble' photograph of the whole Earth on the way out.
Before and after
- 8 November 1972Founding of HBO
- 14 November 1972Birth of Josh Duhamel
- 29 November 1972Release of Pong
- 7 December 1972Launch of Apollo 17
- 14 December 1972Apollo 17: the last humans leave the Moon
- 26 December 1972Death of Harry S. Truman
- 1973Establishment of Chitwan National Park
- 1973Founding of Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
- 1973Construction of London Bridge
More in Exploration & discovery
- 3 August 1958The USS Nautilus crosses the North Pole under the ice
- 14 July 1965Mariner 4 sends the first close-up pictures of Mars
- 3 December 1973Pioneer 10 flies past Jupiter
- 5 March 1979Voyager 1 reveals Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io
- 25 August 1989Voyager 2 flies past Neptune
- 26 September 2022DART spacecraft deflects an asteroid
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.