Harrison Schmitt

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Harrison Schmitt
Harrison Schmitt
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on June 28, 1965
(4th NASA Group)
Calls: 1 space flight
Begin: 7th December 1972
Landing: December 19, 1972
Time in space: 12d 13h 52min
EVA inserts: 3
EVA total duration: 22h 4min
retired on August 1975
Space flights

Harrison Hagan "Jack" Schmitt (born July 3, 1935 in Santa Rita , Grant County , New Mexico ) is a former American astronaut , geologist and politician . He is the last person to date to step on the moon .

Life

education

After Harrison Schmitt graduated from high school , he studied geology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and at the University of Oslo in Norway . In 1964 he received a PhD in geology from Harvard University .

NASA

Schmitt on the moon

Schmitt was the first scientific astronaut of NASA , which actually was used. His previous job was to train the other astronauts for the upcoming lunar excursions in geological studies.

On March 15, 1970, he was assigned to the replacement crew of Apollo 15 as a lunar module pilot . According to the usual rule, he would have been nominated for the main crew of Apollo 18 , but this flight was canceled in September 1970. Under pressure from various quarters, he was finally assigned to the Apollo 17 crew as a science astronaut on August 13, 1971 .

His only mission in space lasted from December 6 to 19, 1972. As part of the Apollo 17 mission, he landed on December 11 with the Challenger lunar module in the Taurus-Littrow area and, together with Eugene Cernan, conducted the longest lunar exploration of all Apollo -Missions through. Schmitt is the twelfth and so far last person to have set foot on the moon, and the penultimate person on the lunar surface, which he left on December 14, 1972 (Cernan, the commander of the mission, entered the lunar surface before Schmitt and returned on the last excursion after him back to the lander).

politics

Schmitt resigned from NASA in August 1975 to run for a Republican seat in the United States Senate for New Mexico in 1976 . He prevailed against incumbent Joseph Montoya and served from January 3, 1977 to January 3, 1983 a tenure as Senator, in which he was a member of the Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee . He lost his re-election in 1982 to the Democrat Jeff Bingaman .

Climate skepticism

Schmitt denies man-made global warming . In his view, global warming is being used as a political tool to increase the control of the American government; the influence of humans on the climate has not been proven. Since the Planetary Society  - according to the state of research on climate change - had named humans as the cause of global warming, he announced his resignation from this society in 2008. He attended a Heartland Institute climate skeptic conference and was a signatory to an open letter from climate skeptics in the Wall Street Journal .

See also

Web links

Commons : Harrison H. Schmitt  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Former NASA Advisory Council Chair Jack Schmitt Quits Planetary Society Over New Roadmap . From: spaceref.com, November 17, 2008. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  2. ^ No Need to Panic About Global Warming . In: The Wall Street Journal , January 27, 2012. Retrieved December 6, 2013.