Word: schmitt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Next day millions of TV viewers on earth watched as Challenger, in a dramatic pyrotechnic display, lifted off from the moon's mountain-rimmed Taurus-Littrow valley. Two hours later, Cernan and Astronaut-Geologist Jack Schmitt reunited with Ron Evans, who was whirling overhead in America. Then, after two more days of observing the moon from the orbiting command ship, the astronauts fired themselves out of lunar orbit and began the three-day journey home. By week's end, the final U.S. expedition to the moon was headed for its scheduled splashdown this week in the South Pacific...
...terms of its scientific payoff, the last Apollo mission will probably turn out to be the best. During their record 22 hours outside their moonship, Cernan and Schmitt collected some 250 lbs. of lunar rocks, more than any of the ten moonwalkers before them. They set up the moon's fifth scientific station and drove their battery-powered rover across 22.5 miles of the cratered valley. They took more than 2,000 photographs, and turned up what may well be the first positive evidence of relatively recent volcanic activity on the moon. Said Schmitt, the first scientist to walk...
...filled with an orange-pink glow, a false dawn against which gulls and pelicans wheeled and fluttered in aimless confusion. The awesome spectacle marked a fitting beginning to the mission of Apollo 17, which at week's end was approaching the moon, carrying Astronauts Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt and Ron Evans on what may well be man's last visit to the lunar surface for decades to come...
Nonetheless, they expect the last mission to be the most scientifically productive. In Scientist-Astronaut Harrison Schmitt, they will finally have the services of a professional geologist on the moon. The Taurus-Littrow landing site contains what may be small, volcanically created cinder cones; they seem to be miniature versions of earthly features like Honolulu's Diamond Head. The cones may well be remnants of what NASA Geochemist Robin Brett calls "some of the last belches of lunar activity before the moon turned off." Finally, Apollo 17 planners have scheduled a program of experiments and observation far more sophisticated...
During their travels across Taurus-Littrow, Astronauts Cernan and Schmitt will also perform several new "traverse" experiments. They will take on-the-spot measurements to determine local fluctuations in the moon's gravitational field in hopes of learning something about the density and structure of the material under the site. With data from a device called a "neutron probe," scientists will be able to calculate how long a particular sample has been lying on or near the lunar surface. The astronauts will also send penetrating microwaves into the lunar surface with a new radio transmitting-receiving system. The pattern...