Eugene Cernan: A life in pictures

Apollo 17 mission commander Eugene Cernan inside the lunar module on the moon after his second moonwalk of the mission. His spacesuit is covered with lunar dust. (NASA)

The crew of Apollo 10, from the left, Eugene Cernan, John Young and Thomas Stafford are photographed while at the Kennedy Space Center. In the background is the Apollo 10 space vehicle on Launch Pad 39 B, The three crewmen had just completed a Countdown Demonstration Test exercise on May 13, 1969. (NASA)

The voyage of Cernan's Apollo 17 marked the program’s final expedition to the moon. It lifted off after midnight on Dec. 7, 1972 from Kennedy Space Center and touched down on the lunar surface on Dec. 11. The crew spent almost 75 hours on the lunar surface, conducted nearly 22 hours of extravehicular activities (EVAs), and traveled almost 19 miles in the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). (NASA)

Cernan makes a short checkout of the Lunar Roving Vehicle during the early part of the first Apollo 17 extravehicular activity at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. (NASA)

Cernan holds the lower corner of the American flag during the mission's first EVA, December 12, 1972. (NASA)

Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. (NASA)

The Apollo 17 spacecraft glided to a safe splashdown at 2:25 p.m. EST on Dec. 19, 1972, 350 nautical miles southeast of American Samoa.  The astronauts were flown by recovery helicopter to the U.S.S. Ticonderoga slightly less than an hour after the completion of NASA's sixth and last manned lunar landing in the Apollo program. (NASA)