Ronald Evans (astronaut) 19 astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966. He served as a member of the astronaut support crews for the Apollo 7 and Apollo 11 flights, and as backup Command Module Pilot for Apollo 14. Evans' only space flight was as Command Module Pilot of Apollo 17, the last scheduled U.S. manned mission to the Moon. He was accompanied by Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt. While Cernan and Schmitt landed and worked on the Moon in the Taurus–Littrow valley, Evans remained in lunar orbit on board the Command Module "America", completing assigned work tasks which required visual geological observations, hand-held
Apollo 17 lunar sample display wish for peace and harmony among the people of the world. He explained that Harrison Schmitt, his fellow astronaut on the Moon with him, had just picked up a "very significant" Moon rock that they hoped would bring this worldwide peace through the distribution of its fragments. This basalt was later identified as lunar basalt 70017, dubbed the "goodwill rock". Once brought back, this Moon rock was broken up into small fragments and distributed in 1973 by President Richard Nixon to all the countries of the world and to the United States with its territories as a goodwill gesture. The