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
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