Eugene Cernan

Eugene Andrew Cernan was born on March 14, 1934, in Chicago, Illinois, to Andrew Cernan, whose family came from Slovakia, and Rose Cihlar Cernan, of Czech descent. He grew up in the working-class suburbs of Bellwood and Maywood, west of the city, where his father worked as a supervisor at a naval facility and taught his son the value of doing a job properly the first time ^[1].

Cernan attended Proviso Township High School in Maywood, where he played football and basketball and graduated in 1952. He then enrolled at Purdue University on a Navy ROTC scholarship, studying electrical engineering. Purdue would later become famous as a cradle of astronauts; Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, had studied there a few years ahead of Cernan, and the two men would eventually bookend the entire lunar landing era ^[2].

He earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1956 and accepted a commission in the United States Navy. The choice set him on a path through naval aviation that mirrored the route taken by many of the astronauts who would follow the original Mercury Seven into orbit ^[1].

After flight training, Cernan won his wings as a naval aviator and flew attack jets, including the A-4 Skyhawk, with squadrons based at Miramar, California. He made hundreds of carrier landings, an unforgiving skill that NASA valued highly when screening pilots for spaceflight ^[3]. Seeking to deepen his technical credentials, he pursued graduate study at the United States Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, earning a master's degree in aeronautical engineering in 1963.

That same year, NASA selected Cernan in its third group of astronauts, a class of fourteen that included future Moon walkers Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, and David Scott. Unlike many of his colleagues, Cernan had not attended test pilot school, which made his selection a mild surprise even to himself, a point he later acknowledged in his memoir ^[1].

He spent his first years at NASA in support roles, learning spacecraft systems and serving on backup crews while the Gemini program worked through the techniques, rendezvous, docking, and spacewalking, that a lunar landing would demand ^[3].

Cernan's first flight came sooner than planned, and under grim circumstances. In February 1966 the prime crew of Gemini 9, Elliot See and Charles Bassett, died when their jet crashed at the McDonnell plant in St. Louis. Cernan and Thomas Stafford, the backup crew, moved up to fly the renamed Gemini 9A mission, which launched on June 3, 1966 ^[4].

The mission was troubled from the start. The intended docking target had been lost in a launch failure, and its replacement reached orbit with its protective shroud jammed half open, a sight Stafford famously described as an angry alligator, which made docking impossible. The crew instead practiced rendezvous approaches before Cernan attempted the second American spacewalk ^[4].

That extravehicular activity nearly ended in disaster. Cernan spent more than two hours outside the spacecraft, and the work of maneuvering without adequate handholds or restraints overwhelmed his suit's cooling system. His visor fogged, his heart rate soared, and he returned to the cabin exhausted, having been unable to test a rocket-powered maneuvering unit as planned. He later called it the spacewalk from hell. The ordeal taught NASA hard lessons about EVA workload, tools, and training that reshaped preparation for every spacewalk that followed ^[1].

In May 1969, Cernan flew as lunar module pilot on Apollo 10, joined again by commander Thomas Stafford and command module pilot John Young. The mission was the full dress rehearsal for the first landing: the crew flew the complete Apollo stack to lunar orbit and tested every phase of a landing mission except the touchdown itself ^[5].

Cernan and Stafford took the lunar module, call sign Snoopy, down to within about nine miles of the lunar surface, skimming over the Sea of Tranquility site where Apollo 11 would land two months later. During staging of the lunar module, a switch set in the wrong position sent the ascent stage into brief, violent gyrations before the crew regained control, a tense moment broadcast in the crew's unvarnished radio calls ^[5].

Apollo 10 returned to Earth on May 26, 1969, and during reentry the command module reached a speed that remains listed as the fastest ever attained by a crewed vehicle. The mission cleared the final technical hurdles for Apollo 11, and among Eugene Cernan achievements it is often overshadowed by his later command, though he always insisted the rehearsal was essential to the landing that followed ^[3].

Cernan was named commander of Apollo 17, the final lunar landing mission, which launched shortly after midnight on December 7, 1972, the program's only night launch. With him flew command module pilot Ronald Evans and lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt, a geologist and the first professional scientist to reach the Moon ^[6].

Cernan and Schmitt landed the lunar module Challenger in the Taurus-Littrow valley, a site chosen for its mix of highland massifs and possible volcanic deposits. Over three days they carried out three moonwalks totaling more than 22 hours, drove the lunar rover across the valley floor, and collected roughly 110 kilograms of rock and soil, including the orange volcanic glass Schmitt spotted at Shorty crater. By most measures, distance driven, samples returned, and time spent on the surface, Apollo 17 was the most productive of the lunar missions ^[6].

Before climbing the ladder for the last time on December 14, 1972, Cernan spoke briefly about leaving as they had come, and, God willing, returning with peace and hope for all mankind. Because he entered the lunar module after Schmitt, Cernan's boot prints were the final ones pressed into the lunar dust, and he carried the title of last man on the Moon for the rest of his life, a distinction he openly hoped someone would soon take from him ^[1].

Cernan remained with NASA into the mid-1970s, serving as a senior United States negotiator in early discussions with the Soviet Union on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. He retired from both NASA and the Navy in 1976 with the rank of captain, having logged over 566 hours in space across his three missions ^[3].

In private life he moved into business and broadcasting. He worked as an executive in the energy and aerospace sectors, founded a consulting firm, The Cernan Corporation, and for years appeared on ABC News as a commentator during space shuttle flights, explaining missions to television audiences. In 1999 he published his memoir, The Last Man on the Moon, written with journalist Don Davis, which became one of the most candid astronaut autobiographies and the basis for a 2014 documentary film of the same name ^[7].

Cernan married Barbara Atchley in 1961, and their daughter Tracy was born in 1963; he traced the initials TDC in the lunar soil for her during Apollo 17. The marriage ended in divorce in 1981, and he later married Jan Nanna. In his final decades he testified before Congress alongside Neil Armstrong, arguing against the cancellation of NASA's Constellation program and pressing for a sustained human return to deep space ^[8]. Eugene Cernan died on January 16, 2017, in Houston, Texas, at the age of 82, following ongoing health problems. He was buried at Texas State Cemetery in Austin ^[9].

Any Eugene Cernan biography turns on a paradox: he is remembered less for being among the first to do something than for being, so far, the last. His parting words at Taurus-Littrow became a challenge to later generations, and he spent his retirement repeating that challenge in speeches, interviews, and congressional testimony. The basic Eugene Cernan facts, three spaceflights, two journeys to the Moon, the eleventh person to walk on its surface, only partly explain his standing; his role as an advocate for exploration gave him a public life long after his flying career ended ^[8].

His honors included induction into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2000 and the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, along with the Navy Distinguished Service Medal and NASA Distinguished Service Medals. Purdue University, which counts both the first and last Moon walkers among its graduates, honors him with archives and memorials on campus ^[2].

When Cernan died in 2017, NASA noted that his footprints, and the message they carry, remain on the Moon awaiting a successor. As new lunar programs take shape, his name is invoked whenever planners speak of the next boots on the surface, the person who will finally retire the title he never wanted to keep ^[9].