“The Apollo Astronauts” by Pierre Mion. Supplement to National Geographic Vol. 144, No. 3 (September 1973).

Teammates in mankind’s greatest adventure

A shared dream of reaching the moon united the Apollo astronauts in a team effort without human parallel. To symbolize that teamwork, artist Pierre Mion here reunites them at a moonlike training site on earth. Space suits and sophisticated equipment, accurate in every detail, represent the contributions of tens of thousands of NASA scientists and engineers, contractors and workmen who shared in the project’s success. Apollo 17 Commander Eugene A. Cernan holds the United States flag, under which the astronauts served, though they flew in the name of all humanity. Behind the flag stand three men whose tragic deaths in a preflight fire triggered intensive studies to eliminate spacecraft flaws. Near them are men who tested the craft in earth orbit.

Trailblazers who orbited the moon join, at left, the crew of Apollo 13, whose disabled ship swung around the moon but was unable to land. The twelve astronauts who walked on the moon — led by Neil A. Armstrong (far right), first man to set foot on another celestial body — gather around or on the lunar module and Rover, as Apollo 17’s Harrison H. Schmitt, first professional geologist on the lunar surface, practices for the moment when he will pick up a moon rock. Gingerly at first, then with enthusiastic leaps, these dozen men explored the craters and rilles, the mountains and valleys of a radiant but relentlessly hostile world.

Each of those who dared to step beyond the cocoon of his home planet won a rare privilege and reward — a vision from afar of our "small and blue and beautiful" earth aglow in the blackness of space.

Posted by lhboudreau on 2017-03-30 14:48:32

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