Apollo 17 The wing of the eagle partially overlays the Moon, suggesting man's established presence there. The gaze of Apollo and the direction of the eagle's motion embody man's intention to explore further destinations in space. The patch includes, along with the colors of the U.S. flag (red, white, and blue), the color gold, representative of a "golden age" of spaceflight that was to begin with Apollo 17. The image of Apollo in the mission insignia is a rendering of the "Apollo Belvedere" sculpture. The insignia was designed by Robert McCall, with input from the crew. Like Apollo 15 and Apollo 16,
Moon landing landing since Luna 24 on 22 August 1976. Progress in space exploration has recently broadened the phrase "moon landing" to include other moons in the Solar System as well. The "Huygens" probe of the "Cassini–Huygens" mission to Saturn performed a successful unmanned moon landing on Titan in 2005. Similarly, the Soviet probe Phobos 2 came within of performing an unmanned moon landing on Mars' moon Phobos in 1989 before radio contact with that lander was suddenly lost. A similar Russian sample return mission called Fobos-Grunt ("grunt" means "soil" in Russian) launched in November 2011, but stalled in low Earth orbit.