Apollo 17: The NASA Mission Reports

It was just past midnight in the early morning hours of December 7th 1972 when the last manned Saturn V roared from the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center. Strapped into the crowded Command Module were Commander Eugene Cernan. Command Module a Pilot Ron Evans and Lunar Module Pilot/Geologist Harrison Schmitt. Their destination was a steep sided lunar valley on the edge of the Sea of Serenity, known as Taurus-Littrow. What this crew hoped to do was increase man's store of knowledge about our nearest celestial neighbor by taking along a trained scientist for the first time. Harrison "Jack" Schmitt was a fully qualified geologist who had been the man who contributed to all of the Apollo astronaut's geological training. Now it would be his turn to witness first-hand the geology of another world. Accompanying Schmitt was another astronaut "rookie", CMP Ron Evans, who would be left in lunar orbit to map out the moon in unprecedented detail. Presiding over this highly trained crew was veteran Gemini and Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan, returning to the moon for a second time this time with the intention of living there for three days. sApollo 17 was the culmination of man's greatest programme of exploration. An unparallelled triumph of planning and technology flown by a team of professionals with expert precision. This book contains many of the internal NASA documents from this extraordinary voyage made commercially available for the first time.