Apollo 17: A Grand Finale

WE leave as we came and, God willing, we shall return with peace and hope for all mankind." As he uttered those hopeful and heartfelt words, Apollo 17's commander, Gene Cernan, stepped from the surface of the moon and clambered up the ladder of lunar module Challenger. Cernan's departure may not be remembered as long as Neil Armstrong's historic arrival three years ago. Nonetheless it was a profound and moving moment that was put in perspective by a presidential pronouncement: "This may be the last time in this century," said Richard Nixon, "that men will walk on the moon."

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, 400 miles south of Samoa.

In 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 the moon: "This valley has seen mankind complete his first evolutionary steps in the universe. I think no more significant contribution has Apollo made to history."

Stark. Emerging from Challenger after its almost perfect landing only about 300 ft. from target near the Crater Camelot,* Geologist Schmitt made it clear that he regarded the stark, rock-littered valley as his special turf. "A geologist's paradise, if I've ever seen one," said the Harvard-trained scientist as he and Cernan began their preliminary chores: familiarizing themselves with the terrain, photographing the area and, finally, maneuvering the rover out of its berth in the side of the lunar module. Then, after a fast test spin by Cernan ("Hallelujah, Houston, Challenger's baby is on the road"), the moon car was positioned so that the remote-controlled color television camera mounted on the front end of the vehicle could begin sending the first pictures back to earth.

Those transmissions were by far the clearest yet sent from the moon. The red, white and blue of the U.S. flag were displayed in brilliant hues on TV screens as the astronauts raised a banner that had hung in Mission Control since the first moon landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969. Expertly operated by technicians at remote control consoles in Houston, the camera picked up the puffs of dust raised by the astronauts as they walked, awkwardly learning to cope with the moon's weak gravity--a sixth that of the earth--and the bulkiness of their space suits. While all the world watched his struggle, Schmitt confessed: "I still haven't learned how to pick up rocks . . . a very embarrassing thing for a geologist to admit."

Cernan also had reason to be embarrassed. With one swing of his geological hammer, he accidentally clobbered the $13,000,000 moon car, knocking off part of one of its rear fiberglass fenders, which act as shields against the spray of dust churned up by the rover's wire mesh wheels. Cernan tried to reattach the section of fender with gaffer tape. But because of the everpresent, clinging fine-grained lunar dust, it would not stick. As precious minutes ticked away. Mission Control suggested that the astronauts abandon the fender repair work and get on with the more important job of setting up the five ALSEP (Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package) experiments.

The experiments also posed problems. Cernan worked so hard trying to drill holes for the important heat-flow experiment--which had been inadvertently disconnected on the Apollo 16 mission--that his pulse climbed to 150 beats per minute. NASA doctors, monitoring his heartbeat, ordered him to rest. Coming to Cernan's aid, Schmitt took a dramatic spill as he tried to extract a balky core tube from the ground. All of the experiments were finally set up, but it was learned later that a key instrument--the surface gravimeter--had jammed. It was a bitter disappointment to scientists, who had hoped that the instrument would help determine if gravity waves, originally postulated by Albert Einstein, really exist.

Unaware of that failure, the elated astronauts improvised a duet, singing, "While strolling on the moon one day . . . in the merry month of December." Mission Control soon interjected a sobering note by notifying them that they were already 40 minutes behind their timetable and that the original objective of their first moon ride had to be scrubbed. But a nearer crater provided an intriguing find: vesicular rocks, containing pockets formed by gas. That was one of several clues that the area had once been the scene of volcanic activity.

Paper Fender. At the start of their second moon walk, the astronauts headed straight for the damaged rover. Displaying a little old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity. Mission Control had advised them to tape together four lunar maps made of stiff photographic paper and attach the resulting 15-by 20-in. rectangle to the damaged fender with clamps taken from Challenger's interior light fixtures. The scheme worked. Indeed, the paper fender was so effective that it shielded the astronauts from dust even when Cernan opened the rover's throttle to more than 7 m.p.h. on the way to South Massif, about four miles away. "Whoooaa, let's slow the speed up," Schmitt pleaded as the car narrowly missed dipping into one steep little crater. Cernan, however, showed a sure hand at the controls. "You can uncurl your toes now," he told Schmitt as they approached their destination, still intact.

Schmitt seemed none too steady as he began his sampling, tumbling twice and muttering "Dadgummit" as he struggled to rise. But his chagrin turned to excitement near a crater named Shorty (after a character in Richard Brautigan's novel Trout Fishing in America). Suddenly, as his space boots scuffed some of the gray topsoil from the crater's rim, he exclaimed: "Hey, there is orange soil. It's all over." Chugging toward him, Cernan shouted: "Well, don't move until I see it!" The astronauts' enthusiasm on the moon was shared by scientists watching in Mission Control's "back room." Caltech's Gerald Wasserburg jumped up from his fourth-row seat and practically pressed his nose against the TV screen to see the coloring for himself. NASA'S Egyptian-born geologist Farouk El Baz, who had helped train the astronauts, beamed proudly. Even the space agency's cautious Australian-born Geochemist Robin Brett exulted: "We have witnessed one of the important finds in Apollo geology."

There was good reason for the excitement. The orange hue indicated that the lunar material may have oxidized, or rusted. That, in turn, meant that it had probably been exposed to water or oxygen. The only likely source for such vapors on the arid, airless moon were volcanic vents in the lunar surface. Indeed, some scientists had suspected earlier that Shorty Crater (which resembles volcanic vents on earth) had been created volcanically rather than by the impact of a meteorite (which is how most of the moon's craters are believed to have been formed). As they await the precious samples of orange soil, some scientists are now speculating that Shorty may in fact be no more than 200,000 or 300,000 years old. That would suggest surprisingly recent volcanic activity on the moon, which was believed to have been largely dormant for the past three billion years.

Flashes. Spinning overhead in America, Command Module Pilot Evans was making his own scientific observations. He spotted two mysterious flashes of light--one east of Mare Orientalis, the other near the great crater Eratosthenes--that could be hints of present-day volcanic venting. (Earlier, while still in lunar orbit, Schmitt also had seen a surface flash.) With the help of a Soviet photograph, Evans spotted a cluster of volcanic-looking domes on the moon's far side; other volcanic formations were spotted on the front side. Finally, America's highly sensitive infrared scanner detected from orbit a number of hot and cold spots on the moon's surface; some of them are as much as 15 miles across. Exclaimed Geology Tutor El Baz: "I really think we're getting our money's worth out of Ron."

On their third moon ride, Cernan and Schmitt headed toward North Massif, a high mountain on the north side of the valley. They poked and hammered at huge boulders that had rolled down from the massif eons ago. Gathering up almost every portable sample in sight, Schmitt said: "I feel like a kid playing in a sandbox." Later, as he began sideslipping in the powdery dust of the massif's slopes, Ski Buff Schmitt pretended that he was slaloming. "Whoosh! Whoosh! Wheeee!" he shouted. "Little hard to get good hip rotation." Examining one of the larger boulders, the astronauts spotted "dikelets"--veins of different material that have been injected into the rock after it has already cooled off and solidified. Such a marble-cake effect could reveal to scientists when different geological episodes took place on the moon.

Moving east, the astronauts made a stop near the Sculptured Hills, which they described as resembling "the wrinkled skin of an old, old man." The hills had apparently been thrust up by the same meteoric impact that created the Sea of Serenity, near the edge of the Taurus-Littrow site. The next stop, a crater called Van Serg, proved to be a disappointment. Scientists had hoped that Van Serg, too, might be of volcanic origin. But after 20 minutes of poking and digging at the site, the astronauts failed to find any more orange dirt. On close inspection, in fact, the crater displayed characteristics (blocky rim, central peak, rocks of fused fragments called breccias) that were distinctly nonvolcanic. Commented Geochemist Richard Williams in Houston: "That sounds like a classic description of an impact crater."

In his final moments outside the moonship, Cernan held up what he called "a very significant rock, composed of many fragments of all sizes and shapes and colors." Speaking directly to youngsters of 78 nations who had been invited to Houston for the final moon shot, Cernan said that the rock would be divided among their countries "as a symbol that we can live in peace and harmony in the future." Then, after moving back to Challenger, Cernan unveiled a plaque on the ship's descent stage, which would remain behind on the moon. Evoking the words of a similar plaque left behind by the Apollo 11 astronauts, it read: "May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind." It carried the engraved signatures of all three astronauts as well as that of President Nixon. But before boarding the moonship for the last time, the astronauts could not resist one more bit of horseplay as Schmitt heaved a geological hammer "a million miles" in the slight lunar gravity.

Too Gentle. Little more than seven minutes after its spectacular ascent from the lunar surface, Challenger was in lunar orbit, ready for its rendezvous with America. "God, you look pretty," Cernan radioed as Challenger approached the mother ship. Evans maneuvered America so gingerly in the final phases that the first docking contact was too gentle; the latches of the docking mechanism failed to catch. The two ships came together harder on the second try and were firmly joined. Taking their rocks, films and other paraphernalia with them, Cernan and Schmitt climbed through the connecting tunnel and rejoined Evans; the moonwalkers had so much dust on them that Evans told them jokingly that he would make them sleep in the passageway. Its job done, Challenger was sent crashing into the moon, bringing the total cost of equipment left on the moon during the Apollo program--including the still operative scientific observatories--to $517 million. The craft landed only nine miles from the valley it had just left. Two days later, on America's 76th revolution of the moon, the astronauts fired the spacecraft engine to blast themselves out of lunar orbit and start them on their voyage home.

* Named in tribute to the man who began the moon program: President John F. Kennedy, who had a special fondness for the musical Camelot.

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