Eugene Cernan

Cernan grew up in the working-class Chicago suburbs of Bellwood and Maywood, the grandson of Czech and Slovak immigrants, and paid his way through Purdue on a Navy ROTC scholarship, graduating in 1956 with an electrical engineering degree and a commission as an ensign. He flew Fury and Skyhawk jets off carriers for the next several years, logging roughly 200 landings and picking up a master's in aeronautical engineering along the way, and in October 1963 NASA chose him from more than 700 applicants for its third astronaut class. He was 29, one of the youngest men in the group, and had never been anywhere near a spacecraft.

His first spaceflight nearly killed him. On Gemini 9A in June 1966 he tried to test a bulky maneuvering backpack outside the capsule and overheated so badly inside his suit that his visor fogged solid, his heart rate spiked past 190, and he had to feel his way back to the hatch half blind. NASA sent him up twice more anyway: as lunar module pilot on Apollo 10 in 1969, the full dress rehearsal that came within 8.5 miles of the Moon without landing, and in December 1972 as commander of Apollo 17, the last mission of the program. Over three days he and Harrison Schmitt drove a rover across the surface, hauled back more lunar rock than any crew before them, and Cernan climbed the ladder last, closing out a program that would not send anyone else.

He was gone for much of his daughter Tracy's childhood, chasing flights and titles that took the time he was not there to give her, and he wrote later that the astronaut life cost him his marriage to Barbara Atchley, which ended in divorce in 1981 after seventeen years. He carried the title "last man on the Moon" for the rest of his life and said more than once that he had never expected to hold it for decades — that he assumed someone would go back and take it from him well before Apollo 17's fiftieth anniversary came and went with no return mission on the schedule. The title he could not shake became, in his own telling, as much a reminder of a program that stopped as a personal honor.

He retired from the Navy in 1976, ran an energy and aerospace consulting business, and spent decades as a commentator and public speaker trading on the one distinction nobody could take from him. His 1999 memoir became a 2014 documentary of the same title. He died in Houston on January 16, 2017, at 82, and was buried nine days later at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, the first astronaut given a plot there. NASA's Artemis program has since set its sights on returning astronauts to the surface, but more than half a century after Cernan climbed back into his lunar module, no one has followed his last bootprint.

Eugene Cernan's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Gemini 9A mission
  His first spaceflight, and a spacewalk that nearly overheated him to death 1966
• Apollo 10 mission
  The dress rehearsal that came within 8.5 miles of the lunar surface 1969
• Apollo 17 mission
  Commanded the last crewed mission to the Moon 1972
• The Cernan Corporation company
  His energy and aerospace consulting firm 1981
• The Last Man on the Moon book
  His memoir, later a 2014 documentary of the same title 1999

• 1956 aged ~22 Graduates from Purdue with an electrical engineering degree
• October 1963 aged 29 Selected by NASA for its third astronaut class
• June 5, 1966 aged 32 Flies Gemini 9A and nearly overheats during a spacewalk
• May 18, 1969 aged 35 Flies Apollo 10 as lunar module pilot
• December 11, 1972 aged 38 Lands on the Moon commanding Apollo 17
• December 14, 1972 aged 38 Becomes the last person to leave the lunar surface He wrote his daughter Tracy's initials in the dust before climbing the ladder.
• 1976 aged ~42 Retires from the Navy as a captain
• January 16, 2017 aged 82 Dies in Houston at 82

• Neil Armstrong 1930–2012
  Astronaut who commanded Apollo 11 and became the first person to set foot on the lunar surface. fellow Purdue alumnus, first man on the Moon
• Harrison Schmitt b. 1935
  Apollo 17 lunar module pilot and only professional scientist to walk on the Moon. Apollo 17 crewmate
• Jim Lovell 1928–2025
  Commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, whose calm leadership brought the crew home safely. fellow astronaut corps member
• Buzz Aldrin b. 1930
  Apollo 11 lunar module pilot and second person to walk on the Moon. second man to walk on the Moon