Harrison Schmitt cancelled in September 1970, the community of lunar geologists supporting Apollo felt so strongly about the need to land a professional geologist on the Moon, that they pressured NASA to reassign Schmitt to a remaining flight. As a result, Schmitt was assigned in August 1971 to fly on the last mission, Apollo 17, replacing Joe Engle as Lunar Module Pilot. Schmitt landed on the Moon with commander Gene Cernan in December 1972. Schmitt claims to have taken the photograph of the Earth known as "The Blue Marble", possibly one of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence. NASA officially
Astronaut-politician by "The New York Times" as a "political neophyte". Jack Swigert, who had flown on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, was elected in November 1982 to the United States House of Representatives representing Colorado, based on a plan he developed that "evolved from his training as an astronaut and the success of the Apollo exploration of the Moon", but died before taking office. NASA's Shuttle program has produced American and foreign politicians. In 1985, Senator Jake Garn went into space aboard the STS-51-D flight as a payload specialist and in 1986 Rep. Bill Nelson of Florida became the second sitting