Eugene Cernan

Portrait of Harrison Schmitt with his visor up, working near the Lunar Rover, station 6

Apollo 17, December 7-19, 1972, EVA 3, 165:57:10 GET

Vintage chromogenic print on fiber-based Kodak paper, 20.3 x 25.4cm (8 x 10in), with “A Kodak Paper” watermarks on the verso, numbered “NASA AS17-146-22296” (NASA MSC) in red in top margin
20.3 x 25.4cm (8 x 10in)

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Lot Essay

One of the very rare photographs of the Apollo program showing an astronaut’s face on the lunar surface.

Henry Crater and Bear Mountain beyond are in the background.
Schmitt is on the downslope side of the Rover whose instruments are well visible.

“The rover was parked with Cernan’s side uphill and it didn’t look as though he would have any particular problem. But Schmitt had visions of not jumping high enough up into his seat, missing, and rolling downhill. So the 17 crew decided that the best plan was for Schmitt to walk down to a small crater where Cernan could get the Rover level enough for him to climb on board” (from the ALSJ mission summary).

“There you were, in a space suit, two inches away from the vacuum of the universe. Every time you made a move - from Earth orbit to translunar coast to lunar orbit, out of the Command Module to the Lunar Module, to the lunar surface, out of the Lunar Module, out on the surface in your suit, jump in the Rover and drive out about as far as you can theoretically walk back - you added a link in a chain that you have to gobble back up to get home. And, yet, you only think about it when you have to think about it,” said Eugene Cernan (from the ALSJ mission transcript at 166:39:10 GET).