Apollo 17 Addresses Congress

Date: January 22, 1973 • Location: Rome, Italy

The crew of Apollo 17 addresses a joint session of Congress after the completion of the final Apollo Moon landing mission.

Apollo 17 was the eleventh and final crewed mission of NASA's Apollo program, the sixth and most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon, while Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans orbited above. Schmitt was the only professional geologist to land on the Moon; he was selected in place of Joe Engle, as NASA had been under pressure to send a scientist to the Moon. The mission's heavy emphasis on science meant the inclusion of a number of new experiments, including a biological experiment containing five mice that stayed in orbit with Evans.