Captain Cernan was the last of 12 Americans to set foot on the moon in six Apollo landings. “The Challenger has landed,” Captain Cernan announced in a broadcast to the world the Apollo crew saw hanging in the sky. Captain Cernan became a NASA astronaut in 1963. Captain Cernan also set a career record of 566 hours in space, 73 of them on the moon’s surface. After Apollo 17, Captain Cernan helped develop the United States-Soviet project Apollo-Soyuz.

Source: New York Times January 17, 2017 01:25 UTC