when was the last time an astronaut went to the moon
December 1972
title: Gene Cernan text: Gene Cernan Eugene Andrew Cernan (; March 14, 1934 – January 16, 2017) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, electrical engineer, aeronautical engineer, and fighter pilot. During the Apollo 17 mission, Cernan became the eleventh person to walk on the Moon. Since he re-entered the lunar module after Harrison Schmitt on their third and final lunar excursion, he is the last person to have walked on the Moon. Cernan traveled into space three times; as pilot of Gemini 9A in June 1966, as lunar module pilot of Apollo 10 in May 1969, and as commander of Apollo 17 in December title: Ronald Evans (astronaut) text: Ronald Evans (astronaut) Ronald Ellwin Evans Jr. (November 10, 1933 – April 7, 1990), (Capt, USN), was an American naval officer and aviator, electrical engineer, aeronautical engineer, and NASA astronaut, also one of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon. Evans was selected as an astronaut by NASA as part of Astronaut Group 5 in 1966 and made his first and only flight into space as Command Module Pilot aboard Apollo 17 in 1972, the last manned mission to the Moon to date, with Commander Eugene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt. During the flight, he orbited title: Moon landing text: have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month period starting on 20 July 1969 UTC, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, and ending on 14 December 1972 UTC with Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17. Cernan was the last to step off the lunar surface. All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained on board the Command Module. The last three missions had a rover for increased mobility. In order to go to the Moon, title: Moon landing text: launch, and GRAIL B followed about eight minutes later. The first probe entered orbit on 31 December 2011 and the second followed on 1 January 2012. The two spacecraft impacted the Lunar surface on 17 December 2012. LADEE was launched on 7 September 2013. The mission ended on 18 April 2014, when the spacecraft's controllers intentionally crashed LADEE into the far side of the Moon, which, later, was determined to be near the eastern rim of Sundman V crater. On 14 December 2013 at 13:12 UTC Chang'e 3 soft-landed a rover on the Moon. This was the first lunar soft title: Apollo 17 text: investigate the possibility of relatively new volcanic activity in the same area. Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt returned to Earth on December 19 after a 12-day mission. Apollo 17 is the most recent manned Moon landing and the most recent time humans travelled beyond low Earth orbit. It was also the first mission to have no one on board who had been a test pilot; X-15 test pilot Joe Engle lost the lunar module pilot assignment to Schmitt, a geologist. The mission broke several records: the longest moon landing, longest total extravehicular activities (moonwalks), largest lunar sample, and longest time in