Apollo 17: NASA's final Apollo moon landing mission in pictures
On Dec. 7, 1972, NASA launched its last Apollo mission to the moon: Apollo 17. See photos from the historic mission here.
www.space.comI can share the latest publicly reported context about the last Apollo mission.
- Apollo 17, launched December 7, 1972, was the final crewed mission of NASA’s Apollo program. Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt landed on the Moon, while Ronald Evans orbited above, marking the end of an era in human lunar exploration.[4][6]
- There has been a long gap since Apollo 17, with NASA’s Artemis program aiming to return humans to the Moon in the 2020s–2030s, but no Apollo-era missions have occurred since 1972.[1][6]
- In recent years, the conversation around “the last Apollo mission” is often framed against Artemis II, a high-profile NASA mission planned to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit for a lunar-distance test flight (without landing) as a stepping stone to crewed lunar landings. Artemis II has been covered as a historic step toward new deep-space capabilities.[3][5]
Notes:
- If you need the most current, minute-by-minute news about Artemis II or related missions, I can fetch up-to-date articles and official NASA press updates.
- If you’d like, I can summarize key milestones of Apollo 17 and compare them to Artemis II objectives to illustrate how the program has evolved.