Harrison Schmitt [Apollo 17]

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The CSM America was approximately 180,000 miles from Earth during the homeward journey when Schmitt took these photographs from the open hatch of the Command Module.
Evans is holding a handrail on the Service Module, and his body is extended over the open SIM (Scientific Instrument Module) bay.

“Adrift between the Earth and the Moon, Ron Evans retrieved the film canister of the mapping cameras on the day after Apollo 17 left lunar orbit. His spacewalk lasted an hour, and resulted in the successful retrieval of data from these three experiments. Ron’s oxygen was fed from the spacecraft through the umbilical hose, with an emergency supply on his back. I was in the open hatch to help in retrieval, which was necessary because the Service Module would be jettisoned
before we reentered the Earth’s atmosphere,” said Harrison Schmitt (NASA SP-250, p.280).

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Apollo 17 splashdown occurred at 1:24:59 p.m. (CST), Dec. 19, 1972, about 350 nautical miles southeast of Samoa (first picture).

The Apollo 17 Command Module America is floating in the Pacific Ocean following splashdown. Schmitt stands in the open hatch with a United States Navy UDT swimmer on the flotation collar (second photograph). The spacecraft was later hoisted aboard the USS Ticonderoga.

The three-man crew of astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans and Harrison H. Schmitt, were picked up by helicopter and flown to the deck of the recovery ship “USS Ticonderoga” after man’s last mission to the Moon and back (third photograph), closing the voyage initiated by President Kennedy a little more than a decade earlier.

It had been, as National Geographic called it, “man’s greatest adventure”.