Apollo 17
The last crewed landing, the only geologist on the Moon, and orange soil.
Key facts
- Agency
- NASA (United States)
- Type of mission
- Crewed landing and sample return
- Target
- The Moon: Taurus–Littrow valley
- Launched
- 7 December 1972
- Samples returned
- 110.5 kg of rock and soil
- Status
- Completed 1972
Apollo 17 was the last time people walked on the Moon. Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt landed on 11 December 1972 in the Taurus–Littrow valley, at the edge of Mare Serenitatis. Schmitt was a trained geologist, the only scientist to have worked on the lunar surface. Over three long moonwalks they drove about 35 kilometres and collected 110.5 kilograms of samples, the largest haul of any mission.
Orange soil
At Shorty crater, Schmitt noticed that the ground was orange. The colour comes from tiny glass beads, droplets of lava sprayed out in volcanic fire fountains about 3.6 billion years ago. Some beads are black because they crystallised. Gases and traces of water on them showed that the deep interior of the Moon was wetter than once thought.
Ancient rocks
Giant boulders that had rolled down from the mountains around the valley gave samples of deep crust. One of them, a rock called a troctolite made of olivine and plagioclase, is about 4.2 billion years old.
The Apollo collection
The six Apollo landings returned 382 kilograms of rock, soil and core in 2,196 separate samples. Some were kept sealed for decades so future scientists could study them with better instruments, and several of those have been opened since 2019.
Key dates
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 7 December 1972 | Apollo 17 launched, the only Apollo night launch. |
| 11 December 1972 | Cernan and Schmitt landed in the Taurus–Littrow valley. |
| 14 December 1972 | The last people to walk on the Moon left the surface. |
| 19 December 1972 | The crew splashed down with 110.5 kg of samples. |
See where this mission fits among all the others in the mission timeline.
Did you know?
Harrison Schmitt is the only professional geologist to have walked on the Moon.
The famous Blue Marble photograph of the whole Earth was taken by the Apollo 17 crew on the way to the Moon.