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: The Last Push time progresses, the repairs fail to restore power, and the ship becomes cold. After a hallucination of his fellow astronaut jolts him awake, he makes one final effort to repair the ship which proves successful. As the ship rounds Venus, Michael dons his space suit and re-enters the damaged hibernation capsule for the first time since the accident. He looks out of the window in awe at the sight of Venus' atmosphere below him. After passing Venus, he successfully ignites the engines and is two years away from Earth. On arriving at Earth he only has to reignite the engines