Apollo 17 investigate the possibility of relatively new volcanic activity in the same area. Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt returned to Earth on December 19 after a 12-day mission. Apollo 17 is the most recent manned Moon landing and the most recent time humans travelled beyond low Earth orbit. It was also the first mission to have no one on board who had been a test pilot; X-15 test pilot Joe Engle lost the lunar module pilot assignment to Schmitt, a geologist. The mission broke several records: the longest moon landing, longest total extravehicular activities (moonwalks), largest lunar sample, and longest time in
Astronaut 18, 1965, on the Soviet Union's Voskhod 2 mission. This was followed two and a half months later by astronaut Ed White who made the first American EVA on NASA's Gemini 4 mission. The first manned mission to orbit the Moon, "Apollo 8", included American William Anders who was born in Hong Kong, making him the first Asian-born astronaut in 1968. The Soviet Union, through its Intercosmos program, allowed people from other "socialist" (i.e. Warsaw Pact and other Soviet-allied) countries to fly on its missions, with the notable exception of France participating in Soyuz TM-7. An example is Czechoslovak Vladimír