In December 1972, as one of the crew onboard Apollo 17, Harrison Schmitt became the first member of NASA's first scientist-astronaut group to fly in space.
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19 Facts About Harrison Schmitt
2.
Harrison Schmitt remains the only professional scientist to have flown beyond low Earth orbit and to have visited the Moon.
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3.
Harrison Schmitt was influential within the community of geologists supporting the Apollo program and, before starting his own preparations for an Apollo mission, had been one of the scientists training those Apollo astronauts chosen to visit the lunar surface.
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4.
Harrison Schmitt resigned from NASA in August 1975 to run for election to the United States Senate as a member from New Mexico.
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5.
Harrison Schmitt spent considerable time becoming proficient in the CSM and LM systems.
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6.
Harrison Schmitt landed on the Moon with commander Gene Cernan in December 1972.
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7.
Since the death of Cernan in 2017, Harrison Schmitt is the most recent person to have walked on the Moon who is still alive.
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8.
Harrison Schmitt poses by the American flag, with Earth in the background, during Apollo 17's first EVA.
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9.
Harrison Schmitt campaigned for fourteen months, and his campaign focused on the future.
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10.
Harrison Schmitt served one term and, notably, was the chairman of the Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce.
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11.
Harrison Schmitt sought a second term in 1982, facing state Attorney General Jeff Bingaman.
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12.
Harrison Schmitt is an adjunct professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and has long been a proponent of lunar resource utilization.
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13.
Harrison Schmitt wrote a book entitled Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space in 2006.
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14.
Harrison Schmitt has expressed the view that the risks posed by climate change are overrated and suggests instead that climate change is a tool for people who are trying to increase the size of government.
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15.
Harrison Schmitt co-authored a 2013 Wall Street Journal opinion column with William Happer, contending that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are not significantly correlated with global warming, attributing the "single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas" to advocates of government control of energy production.
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16.
Harrison Schmitt was one of five inductees into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1977.
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17.
Harrison Schmitt was one of 24 Apollo astronauts who were inducted into the U S Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1997.
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18.
Harrison Schmitt is one of the astronauts featured in the 2007 documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.
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19.
Harrison Schmitt contributed to the 2006 book NASA's Scientist-Astronauts by David Shayler and Colin Burgess.
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