RSS
Eugene A. Cernan
Eugene A. Cernan walked in space on Gemini 9, orbited the moon on Apollo 10 and walked on the moon as commander of Apollo 17.
He was born March 14, 1934, in Chicago. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 1956 and a Master of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
Cernan, a retired Navy captain, received his commission through the Navy ROTC program at Purdue and entered flight training upon graduation. He was assigned to Attack Squadrons 26 and 113 at the Miramar Naval Air Station in California and later attended the Naval Postgraduate School.
He was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1963. He flew as pilot on Gemini 9 with Tom Stafford as commander in June, 1966. They rendezvoused with an alternate docking target after the Atlas boosting their original Agena target failed. They could not dock with the alternate because a protective fiberglass shroud had failed to separate completely, but they flew three different types of rendezvous with it. The next day Cernan opened his hatch and stepped into space, moving to an equipment bay in the rear of the spacecraft where he was to have donned a rocket-powered astronaut maneuvering unit (AMU) which he was to test on the end of a 125-foot tether. But the complexities of checking out and connection with the AMU while trying to maintain position in weightlessness required more work than expected. He began breathing heavily and perspiring, and fog collected inside his helmet and visor and froze. He finally gave up the AMU effort and climbed back inside after a then record, but troubled, 2 hours 9 minutes outside.
Cernan and Stafford returned to space together aboard Apollo 10 on May 18, 1969. Together with John Young, they orbited the moon, and Cernan and Stafford separated the Lunar Module and approached to within 10 miles of the surface, paving the way for the Apollo 11 crew to make the first moon landing two months later. He had his own Apollo command when Apollo 17 blasted off on Dec. 7, 1972. With him were Ronald Evans and geologist-astronaut Harrison H. (Jack) Schmitt. Cernan and Schmitt landed in a mountain-ringed valley named Taurus-Littrow. They set up a science station and then assembled their moon buggy for three seven-hour excursions over as many days. They launched themselves back to the Command Module, and the astronauts spent two additional days in lunar orbit to gather more information and then headed home. They splashed down on Dec 19 to conclude the final flight in the Apollo moon program.
Cernan later acted for the program manager as the senior U.S. negotiator in direct discussions with the Soviets on Apollo-Soyuz, the 1975 joint American-Soviet space mission. He retired from the Navy and left NASA in 1976 to enter business. He currently is president of The Cernan Corp. in Houston, where he and his wife, Jan, live. Cernan serves on the Board of Trustees of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.
Eugene Cernan was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame on March 19, 1993.