Apollo 17, the final lunar landing mission, was the first night launch of a Saturn V rocket. The crescent Earth rises above the lunar horizon in this spectacular photograph taken from the Apollo ...

Clockwise from top left, Apollo 17 in view of its target during countdown on Dec. 7, 1972; likewise, Artemis 1 on the night before its launch on Nov. 14; Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis I ...

the moon and Mars both reached opposition on Wednesday night and have been, thus, at their brightest as we celebrate this 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 17, the last human mission to the ...

The Apollo 17 mission got underway with the program's first night launch from Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral) at 12:33 a.m. local time Dec. 7, 1972, following a 2-hr. 40-min. delay.

An Apollo 17 astronaut stands on the moon’s surface in 1972 with the United States flag in the background. Apollo 17 was the seventh and last manned lunar landing and return-to-Earth mission. | NASA ...

But even as public interest waned, Apollo 17 was NASA’s last chance to demonstrate ... The final Apollo mission was the first to launch at night — and also the first to suffer a delay on ...

Apollo 17 took off from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A on December 7th ... to see the leviathan rocket as the inky blackness of night made the mighty Saturn V shine even brighter.

7, 1972, making them the first U.S. astronauts to launch at night. This enabled Apollo 17 to reach the Moon in the early lunar morning, with the Sun providing adequate shadows and good visibility ...