page_title: Apollo 17
section_title: Return to Earth
hierarchical_section_title: Apollo 17 / Mission highlights / Return to Earth
caption_attribution_description: English: A water-level view of the Apollo 17 Command Module (CM) floating in the Pacific Ocean following splashdown and prior to recovery. The prime recovery ship, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga (CVS-14), is in the background. When this picture was taken, the three-man crew of astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans and Harrison H. Schmitt, had already been picked up by helicopter and flown to the deck of the recovery ship. The spacecraft was later hoisted aboard the USS Ticonderoga. A United States Navy UDT swimmer stands on the flotation collar. Apollo 17 splashdown occurred at 13:24:59 (CST), 19 December 1972, about 350 nautical miles southeast of Samoa.
context_page_description: Apollo 17 was the final Moon landing mission of NASA's Apollo program, and remains the most recent time humans have travelled beyond low Earth orbit. Its crew consisted of Commander Eugene Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, and Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and it carried a biological experiment containing five mice.
  Launched at 12:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on December 7, 1972, Apollo 17 was a "J-type mission" that included three days on the lunar surface, extended scientific capability, and the use of the third Lunar Roving Vehicle.
  Cernan and Schmitt landed in the Taurus–Littrow valley and completed three moonwalks, taking lunar samples and deploying scientific instruments. The landing site had been chosen to further the mission's main goals: to sample lunar highland material older than Mare Imbrium, and to investigate the possibility of relatively recent volcanic activity. Evans remained in lunar orbit in the command and service module, taking scientific measurements and photographs.
  Cernan, Evans, Schmitt, and the mice returned to Earth on December 19.
context_section_description: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt successfully lifted off from the lunar surface in the ascent stage of the LM on December 14, at 5:55 pm EST. After a successful rendezvous and docking with Ron Evans in the CSM in orbit, the crew transferred equipment and lunar samples between the LM and the CSM for return to Earth. Following this, the LM ascent stage was sealed off and jettisoned at 1:31 am on December 15. The ascent stage was then deliberately crashed into the Moon in a collision recorded by seismometers deployed on Apollo 17 and previous Apollo expeditions.
  During the return to Earth, Evans performed a 65-minute EVA to retrieve film cassettes from the service module's scientific instrument module (SIM) bay, with assistance from Schmitt who remained at the command module's hatch.  At approximately 160,000 nautical miles (184,000 mi; 296,000 km) from Earth, it was the third "deep space" EVA in history, performed at great distance from any planetary body.  As of 2020, it remains one of only three such EVAs, all performed during Apollo's J-missions under similar circumstances.  It was the last EVA of the Apollo program.
  On December 19, the crew jettisoned the no-longer-needed SM, leaving only the CM for return to Earth. The Apollo 17 spacecraft reentered Earth's atmosphere and landed safely in the Pacific Ocean at 2:25 p.m., 6.4 kilometers (4.0 mi) from the recovery ship, USS Ticonderoga. Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt were then retrieved by a recovery helicopter and were safely aboard the recovery ship 52 minutes after landing.
caption: Apollo 17 command module America after splashdown, with USS Ticonderoga in background
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