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Today is the 34th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 17, NASA's last manned mission to the moon. Shortly after midnight on December 7, 1972, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent a crew of three astronauts into space from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA's first nighttime launch was the last in a series of J-Series missions which featured improved hardware, larger payloads, and a battery-powered lunar roving vehicle (LRV). Apollo 17's scientific objectives included the Biostack II and Biocore experiments. Biostack II studied the effects of cosmic high-energy loss (HZE) particles on biological samples such as seeds, spores, and insect eggs. Biocore exposed five mice from the California desert to a specific portion of the HZE spectrum. By studying damage to the mice's brain and eye tissues, NASA hoped to learn more about the effects of radiation on future astronauts traveling on extended, extra-lunar missions.
As part of its 12-day expedition, Apollo 17 landed on the moon's Taurus-Littrow highlands and valley area. NASA selected this location in order to sample rocks that were both younger and older than those returned from previous lunar missions. In addition to the Biostack II and Biocore experiments, the crew of Apollo 17 performed heat flow, seismic profiling, and atmospheric composition studies. The mission commander, Eugene A. Cernan, holds the distinction of being the last man to walk on the moon since he was the last astronaut to reenter the lunar exclusion module (LEM) during the final extra-vehicular activity (EVA). Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, the lunar module pilot, became the first and only scientist to walk on the moon. Schmitt, a geologist who later became a U.S. senator from New Mexico, also captured "The Blue Marble" photo of Earth, one of the world's most widely distributed images. The third Apollo 17 crew member, Ron Evans, piloted the command module on his first and only spaceflight.
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