Gate Maker: Alumnus plays critical role in NASA’s effort to return to the Moon
When Gene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt climbed into their lunar module nearly 50 years ago at the end of the Apollo 17 mission, it marked the end of an era. The Apollo 17 crew would splash down in the Pacific Ocean a few days later, marking the end of humanity’s presence on the Moon for the foreseeable future. A new age of space exploration was ushered in with the launch of the first space shuttle in 1981. The shuttle program had its own set of triumphs, notably the launch and subsequent repairs of the Hubble Space Telescope. But the pursuit of so-called deep space exploration via crewed missions — including a return to the Moon — did not seem imminent, replaced instead with a series of missions involving uncrewed probes in deep space and crewed missions closer to Earth.…
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