Apollo 17: 40 Years Later

On Dec. 7, 1972, Astronauts Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt and Ron Evans launched on a Saturn V rocket on what what be the final voyage of the Apollo program.

Cernan and Schmitt, NASA's first scientist-astronaut, explored the moon's Taurus-Littrow valley, leaving, in Cernan's words, "as we came ... with peace and hope for all mankind."