Apollo 17
Eugene Cernan leaves the Moon after Apollo 17's final surface EVA
View full image ↗ How was this image made?
The creative brief sent to the image model. These are instructions, not a record of what actually happened.
Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗For several seconds after Schmitt climbed inside Challenger, Cernan stood as the only person on the Moon.
05:40:56 UTC, 14 December 1972
At Taurus-Littrow, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt completed Apollo 17's third EVA — the final lunar-surface EVA of the Apollo program — which ended at 05:40:56 UTC on 14 December 1972 after approximately 7 hours 15 minutes. Because it began on the evening of 13 December in Eastern Standard Time, some U.S. accounts date the event a day earlier.
Schmitt entered Lunar Module Challenger first. Cernan then delivered a farewell from the surface, climbed the ladder and reported himself inside the hatch, making him the most recent person to leave the lunar surface.
The order that made him last
Cernan was not the last astronaut to step onto the Moon during Apollo 17 — he was the first out. He became the last person there because he climbed back into Challenger after Schmitt.
His cuff checklist carried a short prompt to remind him of the farewell he planned to give before climbing the ladder. After he reported himself inside, the crew inspected lunar dust on the hatch seal before closing it for the final time.
Seventeen hours to liftoff
The human departure and the Lunar Module's liftoff were separate events, roughly seventeen hours apart. Challenger's ascent stage lifted off at 22:54:37 UTC on 14 December to rejoin Ronald Evans in the command-and-service module America.
The astronauts left the Lunar Module's descent stage, scientific instruments, equipment and a commemorative plaque at Taurus-Littrow. By the end of 14 December, no human remained on the Moon.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 3 audit passes
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
What the sources leave uncertain
- The event is sometimes dated December 13 in U.S. accounts because EVA 3 began on the evening of December 13 in Eastern Standard Time. Cernan's final departure from the surface and the EVA's end occurred after midnight EST and at about 05:40 UTC on December 14.
- NASA currently targets Artemis IV for a 2028 lunar landing, but that is a program target rather than a guaranteed boundary on how long Cernan remains the most recent Moon-walker.