Eugene Cernan

Astronaut Gene Cernan was born in Chicago, Illinois, on March 14th, 1934. He received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 1956 and a master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

Cernan was chosen by NASA in October 1963 to be an astronaut for the Gemini and Apollo missions. He flew alongside Tom Stafford on the Gemini 9 mission. On his second space flight, he was lunar module pilot of Apollo 10 in 1969 with John Young and Thomas Stafford, during which they orbited the Moon, completed a lunar rendezvous, and tracked proposed lunar landing sites. Cernan served as spacecraft commander of Apollo 17—the last scheduled moon landing mission for the United States. Since he was the last one in the lunar module after Harrison Schmitt on their final lunar excursion, Cernan is the last person to have walked on the Moon.