Harrison Schmitt credits the image to the entire Apollo 17 crew. While on the Moon's surface, Schmitt — the only geologist in the astronaut corps — collected the rock sample designated Troctolite 76535, which has been called "without doubt the most interesting sample returned from the Moon". Among other distinctions, it is the central piece of evidence suggesting that the Moon once possessed an active magnetic field. As he returned to the Lunar Module before Cernan, Schmitt is the next-to-last person to have walked on the Moon's surface. After the completion of Apollo 17, Schmitt played an active role in documenting the
Fallen Astronaut upright. He also denies it was agreed he would remain anonymous. Both his and Scott's versions of events are given in an article in "Slate" magazine in 2013. During the Apollo 15 mission, near the completion of his work on the lunar surface on August 1, 1971, Scott secretly placed the "Fallen Astronaut" on the Moon, along with a plaque bearing the names of eight American astronauts and six Soviet cosmonauts who had died in service: Scott photographed the memorial, but waited for a post-mission press conference to publicly disclose its existence. Later, he noted that "Sadly, two names are