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 Fallen Astronaut Fallen Astronaut is an aluminium sculpture created by Paul Van Hoeydonck. It is a small stylized figure, meant to depict an astronaut in a spacesuit, intended to commemorate the astronauts and cosmonauts who have died in the advancement of space exploration. It was commissioned and placed on the Moon by the crew of Apollo 15 at Hadley Rille on August 1, 1971, next to a plaque listing the fourteen men known at the time to have died. The crew kept the memorial's existence a secret until after completion of their mission. After public disclosure, the National Air and