Schmitt, Harrison

Harrison Schmitt, in full Harrison Hagan Schmitt, byname Jack Schmitt, (born July 3, 1935, Santa Rita, New Mexico, U.S.), American geologist, astronaut, and politician who was part of the Apollo space program’s last flight (1972). He later served in the U.S. Senate (1977–83).

Watch Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt walking and singing on the Moon in December 1972See all videos for this article

Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt on the Moon, 1972

Schmitt was educated at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, the University of Oslo, and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he received a Ph.D. in geology in 1964. He was employed by the U.S. Geological Survey in its astrogeology branch at Flagstaff, Arizona (1964–65), before joining the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He participated in the lunar landing of Apollo 17 in December 1972. Schmitt and commander Eugene A. Cernan were the last men on the Moon, spending 22 hours and 5 minutes on the lunar surface and traveling 36 km (22 miles). Schmitt, a Republican, was elected to the U.S. Senate from New Mexico in 1976 but was defeated in a bid for a second term in 1982. He later became an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In 2006 Schmitt published Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space.