Launch of Apollo 17

Apollo 17 lights up the night sky over Kennedy Space Center on the final Apollo Moon landing mission — the only Apollo launch to occur after dark. Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, the only professional geologist to walk on the Moon, spent more than three days exploring the Taurus-Littrow valley, and Cernan's final words on the surface, 'we shall return,' remain the last spoken by a human being on the Moon.