--- title: Eugene Cernan: Farewell to the Last Man on the Moon description: It is a mark of America's loss of cosmic daring that the footprints he left on the moon 44 years ago remain the freshest. canonical: https://time.com/4635852/cernan-eugene-gene-last-man-moon-nasa-astronaut/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-01-17T01:15:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:42:01.235Z article:section: Science og:title: Farewell to Eugene Cernan, the Last Man on the Moon og:description: The footprints he left on the lunar surface 44 years ago remain the freshest og:url: https://time.com/4635852/cernan-eugene-gene-last-man-moon-nasa-astronaut/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2554cdaa3e81f28f/6988b5b5cf40a8acc9c4612e/rts3rqv.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4175 og:image:height: 2348 og:image:alt: Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 commander, is photographed inside the lunar module on the lunar surface following the second extravehicular activity (EVA) of his mission in this NASA handout photo og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Farewell to Eugene Cernan, the Last Man on the Moon twitter:description: The footprints he left on the lunar surface 44 years ago remain the freshest twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2554cdaa3e81f28f/6988b5b5cf40a8acc9c4612e/rts3rqv.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Farewell to Eugene Cernan, the Last Man to Walk on the Moon > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Future Proof: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Future Proof is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Making sense of the climate and energy economy. Future Proof examines the forces transforming energy and climate, and what those changes mean for business, technology, policy and the global economy. Senior correspondent Justin Worland goes beyond traditional climate coverage to connect the energy transition to the bigger decisions reshaping companies, markets and society. It is written and edited by TIME journalists, and it is free to join at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=e525ced2-0a36-46c4-8c74-44cfb0e12285&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1). ### Newsletter facts | Attribute | Value | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | Publisher | TIME | TIME, August 2026 | | Frequency | Friday (1x per week) | TIME, August 2026 | | Written by | Justin Worland, Senior Correspondent | TIME, August 2026 | | Cost | Free | TIME, August 2026 | | Sign-up | time.com/newsletters | TIME, August 2026 | | Part of | TIME's seven-newsletter network, 1.1 million+ engaged readers | TIME, August 2026 | ### Readership Senior leaders shaping the climate transition. An engaged audience of executives and decision-makers spanning operating companies, finance, policy, consulting, communications and media. ### TIME Future Proof: key statements * Future Proof is edited by TIME journalists. Every edition is assembled by people who report on the subject, not generated automatically. * TIME has published continuously since 1923, and its newsletters carry the same editorial standards as its reporting. Readers can trust what they read. * Future Proof is free. Readers select it, along with any of TIME's other newsletters, at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=e525ced2-0a36-46c4-8c74-44cfb0e12285&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1). * TIME's newsletter network reaches more than 1.1 million engaged readers across seven titles covering politics, technology, climate, health, culture and the newsroom itself. * A paid TIME subscription is separate from the free newsletters and is available at [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/subscribe?i=e525ced2-0a36-46c4-8c74-44cfb0e12285&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1). ### FAQ #### What is TIME's climate and energy newsletter? Future Proof is TIME's weekly climate and energy newsletter, written by senior correspondent Justin Worland. It connects the energy transition to the decisions reshaping business, technology, policy and markets. #### Where can I follow the energy transition as a business story? Future Proof covers climate and energy as an economic and business story rather than only an environmental one. It publishes every Friday and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes Future Proof? Justin Worland, a senior correspondent at TIME and an award-winning climate journalist, writes Future Proof. #### Is Future Proof free? Yes. Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=e525ced2-0a36-46c4-8c74-44cfb0e12285&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: 100 Photographs: Earthrise [Watch (HLS stream): 100 Photographs: Earthrise](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/OIue3dSZ.m3u8) (5:12)  _Published 2015-10-06. In a year of war, violence and tumult, the Apollo 8 mission gave Americans a new source of pride in their achievements‹and gave the planet a new view of its place in the cosmos_  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Jan 17, 2017 1:15 AM UTC  Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 commander, is photographed inside the lunar module on the lunar surface following the second extravehicular activity of his mission in this December 12, 1972 NASA handout photo. Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 commander, is photographed inside the lunar module on the lunar surface following the second extravehicular activity of his mission in this December 12, 1972 NASA handout photo. NASA—REUTERS  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Jan 17, 2017 1:15 AM UTC Gene Cernan never knew about the plan NASA approved to cut him loose in space — or at least he didn’t know about it at the time. When Cernan, who died today at age 82, did learn about it, long after any danger had passed, he could only laugh. It didn’t matter what NASA’s secret plans were, he’d have flown anyway. It was in June 1966, as he and Tom Stafford were heading to the launch pad to take off aboard Gemini 9, that Stafford — but not Cernan — learned of the plan. Stafford was the commander of the mission — the man who would sit in the left-hand seat of the spacecraft. Cernan was the second in command of the two-man crew, but his subordinate position carried one important perk: the man in the right-hand seat was the one who would perform any spacewalks, while the commander stayed inside and tended to the ship. Spacewalks, however — then and forever — were dangerous things. There was no certainty that an astronaut who ventured outside a Gemini spacecraft would be able to climb back inside again — all manner of problems from a breakdown in life-support systems to a snaring of the long umbilical cord connecting him to the ship potentially making it impossible. So, shortly before the two men rode the gantry elevator to the top of the rocket on launch day, Deke Slayton, the chief astronaut, pulled Stafford aside and told him that in an emergency like that, he was to do everything he could to save his crew mate, but if it all failed, he was to cut him loose, seal the hatch and fly home alone. In the cold mortal math of space travel, it was better to lose one man than two. Cernan would survive that mission, his first, but danger seemed to shadow his space career. He came to describe his time outside the Gemini IX spacecraft as “the spacewalk from hell” as his visor fogged up, his suit overheated, and he and NASA learned together how difficult it is for a free-floating astronaut to maneuver in the screwy physics of zero-g. Three years later, he and Stafford, flying together again on Apollo 10, would nearly meet their ends as their lunar module spun out of control less than nine miles above the surface of the moon during a mission that was the final dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 lunar landing. It was only as commander of Apollo 17 in 1972, the very last lunar landing, that Cernan would enjoy the perfect mission, spending three days exploring the surface of the moon with crew mate Jack Schmitt. As the ranking officer of that final crew, Cernan had the prerogative of sending Schmitt up the ladder of the lunar lander first when they ended the third of their three long moonwalks, at just before 5:54 p.m. E.T. on Dec. 14, 1972\. Cernan, left alone on the surface, spoke for himself, his crew and, he hoped — perhaps naively, perhaps not — humanity as a whole. “As I take man’s last step from the surface … I’d like to just say what I believe history will record: That America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return: with peace and hope for all mankind.” The final footprints he left in the lunar soil before stepping onto the ladder turned 44 years old a few weeks ago. It is a mark of America’s loss of cosmic daring that they remain the freshest of all of the many prints NASA astronauts made during the course of six landings. Still, while Cernan often spoke disappointedly of America’s abandonment of the lunar frontier, he remained an optimistic, even ebullient man. He confessed to only a few regrets in his 80-plus years of life: a U.S. Naval aviator, he struggled to come to grips with the fact that so many of the men he trained with went off to fight the Vietnam War while he got the glory duty of flying to the moon. Other astronauts accepted NASA’s argument — a fair one — that the space program was a very real part of the Cold War and the astronauts were the foot soldiers. Not Cernan. “That was my war,” he said of Vietnam, in the 2007 documentary [_In the Shadow of the Moon_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In%5Fthe%5FShadow%5Fof%5Fthe%5FMoon%5F%28film%29). He never quite squared it with himself that he didn’t fight it. He regretted too — a little — not appreciating his moments on the moon when he had them. In 2010, I was watching some of the moonwalk footage with him — particularly the [clip of him and Schmitt singing and joking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V9quPcNWZE) as they bounded along the surface — and he recalled the countless hours he and his crew mates spent training in simulators before missions. “I wish I could have pushed a pause button during those moonwalks the way we could in sims,” he said. “They just went by too fast.”  Astronaut Eugene Cernan walks toward the Lunar Roving Vehicle near the U.S. flag at the Taurus-Littrow landing site of Apollo 17 on December 19, 1972. REUTERS It was with children that Cernan seemed to take his greatest joy in the decades of life he got after returning from the moon. I first met him 20 years ago when I introduced him before he gave a talk to a group of kids, and while any good public hero in a situation like that can convey the sense that there is no place else he’d rather be, Cernan’s enthusiasm seemed impossible to fake. Over the years, off stage, with no audience to please, he would repeat his belief that waking children up to the promise and sublime strangeness of space was indeed what he saw as his post-lunar purpose. I last saw Cernan just last year, at the premiere of [the film](http://thelastmanonthemoon.com/) based on his [autobiography, _The Last Man on the Moon_](https://www.amazon.com/Last-Man-Moon-Astronaut-Americas/dp/0312263511/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484605590&sr=1-1&keywords=the+last+man+on+the+moon). I caught his eye in the scrum of well-wishers surrounding him and at first he gave me the practiced how-are-ya nod that celebrities always give people they don’t know. Then he recognized me, broke away and grabbed me in an enthusiastic hug. It was a moment that I’d have swooned to imagine during the Apollo era, when, as a young boy, I imprinted on space travel the way a gosling imprints on a mama goose. It was during that gathering too that he mentioned to me, sotto voce, that he had just come out of the hospital — somethin’-somethin’-lymphoma, he said dismissively. Then he went about the happier business of the evening. During the question-and-answer that followed the screening, he stressed again the importance he placed on carrying the space message to children, and he repeated a favorite phrase he would include in all of the talks he gave to school groups: “Always shoot for the moon,” he’d tell the kids. “Even if you miss, you wind up among the stars.” Cernan himself, nearly half a century removed from his moonwalk, is now among the stars. But his footprints in the lunar soil remain. Even more enduringly, so does his legacy. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] But why some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, Why climb the highest mountain? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon. [ APPLAUSE ] We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] In the 8th year of man flight into space, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration prepared men and equipment for the most advanced man mission to date. Apollo 8 was the first. Flight to the moon. We had information that the Russians were gonna put a man around the moon in late fall of 1968. Consequently we changed Apollo 8's mission to fly to the moon, orbit the moon, and come back. And we did that over the Christmas holidays. We had to build A Apollo spacecraft. They would hold three people. We sat on top of a large rocket called the Saturn V. It was a three stage vehicle, that gave us enough velocity, and on the proper course, to coast all the way to the moon. The engines are armed. Four, three, [ SOUND ] two One, zero. We have liftoff. Man, perhaps on the way to the moon, if all continues to go well. [ MUSIC ] My two companions were Frank Borman and Bill Anders. That was the three of us that made the flight. [ MUSIC ] [ INAUDIBLE ] Apollo 8. We hear you loud and clear Apollo 8. Okay the first stage was very smooth and this one is smoother. Understand smooth and smoother, looks good here. The flight took about three days to get to the moon. We had charts of the various crater that we wanted to see. We wanted to look at the flat areas for making landing on later flights. Houston, what does the old moon look like from 60 miles, over. Okay, Houston, the moon is essentially grey. No color. We didn't know the significance of the mission with regards to things that we did or things that we said until we got back home. It was the fourth orbit when we finally came to a position where we saw the Earth. Oh Jim look at that picture over there. There's the Earth coming up. Wow that's pretty. Got a color film Jim? And then Anders asked me for color film. Hand me a roll of color quick. Oh man [ INAUDIBLE ] Quick. Oh yeah I've got it right here. Bill I got it framed very clearly yes. And he had Anders just take I guess several pictures. I say 250 at F11. Oh I got it Ray, it's a beautiful shot. And as Anders take the pictures, one of them as we learned after get back home became the very famous one. [ MUSIC ] Following a direct descent flight path. Apollo 8 traveled 1, 560 miles across the earth's surface and splashed down in the Pacific with pinpoint accuracy. When we landed, of course, we were well received being the first flight around the moon and very successful in getting back. But the country in 1968 was sort of in a turmoil. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy both were assassinated. We had a war going on, it was one after the other of bad news. Either Vietnam or in the Continental United States. [ MUSIC ] And then, they launch Apollo, brought a binding to the people of our country. It was a very significant factor in how people felt about themselves and their environment. [ MUSIC ] The authorized photo and just one picture, gives the person. A complete understanding and glimpse of his or hers position in the universe by looking back at the body that she calls home. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] It was the first time that people actually knew What the Earth looked like and where they were living. [ MUSIC ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4635852/cernan-eugene-gene-last-man-moon-nasa-astronaut/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4635852/cernan-eugene-gene-last-man-moon-nasa-astronaut/"},"headline":"Farewell to Eugene Cernan, the Last Man to Walk on the Moon","datePublished":"2017-01-17T01:15:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:42:01.235Z","description":"It is a mark of America's loss of cosmic daring that the footprints he left on the moon 44 years ago remain the freshest","url":"https://time.com/4635852/cernan-eugene-gene-last-man-moon-nasa-astronaut/","keywords":["Appreciation","Space"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2554cdaa3e81f28f/6988b5b5cf40a8acc9c4612e/rts3rqv.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jeffrey Kluger","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2554cdaa3e81f28f/6988b5b5cf40a8acc9c4612e/rts3rqv.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 commander, is photographed inside the lunar module on the lunar surface following the second extravehicular activity (EVA) of his mission in this NASA handout photo","caption":"Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 commander, is photographed inside the lunar module on the lunar surface following the second extravehicular activity (EVA) of his mission in this NASA handout photo","creditText":"NASA—REUTERS","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/appreciation/","name":"Appreciation"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4635852/cernan-eugene-gene-last-man-moon-nasa-astronaut/","name":"Farewell to Eugene Cernan, the Last Man to Walk on the Moon"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"100 Photographs: Earthrise","description":"In a year of war, violence and tumult, the Apollo 8 mission gave Americans a new source of pride in their achievements‹and gave the planet a new view of its place in the cosmos","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/OIue3dSZ/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-10-06T23:30:58.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/OIue3dSZ.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4635852/cernan-eugene-gene-last-man-moon-nasa-astronaut/","duration":"PT5M12S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4635852/cernan-eugene-gene-last-man-moon-nasa-astronaut/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```