1. In December 1972, as one of the crew on board Apollo 17, Schmitt became the first member of NASA's first scientist-astronaut group to fly in space.
22 Facts About Harrison Schmitt
1. 2.
Harrison Schmitt remains the only professional scientist to have flown beyond low Earth orbit and to have visited the Moon.
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.
4.
Harrison Schmitt resigned from NASA in August 1975 to run for election to the United States Senate as a member from New Mexico.
5.
Harrison Schmitt received a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from the California Institute of Technology in 1957 and then spent a year studying geology at the University of Oslo in Norway, as a Fulbright Scholar.
6.
Harrison Schmitt received a Doctor of Philosophy in geology from Harvard University in 1964, based on his geological field studies in Norway.
7.
Harrison Schmitt spent considerable time becoming proficient in the CSM and LM systems.
8.
Harrison Schmitt landed on the Moon with commander Gene Cernan in December 1972.
9.
Since the death of Cernan in 2017, Harrison Schmitt is the most recent person to have walked on the Moon who is still alive.
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.
11.
Harrison Schmitt sought a second term in 1982, facing state Attorney General Jeff Bingaman.
12.
Harrison Schmitt was chair of the NASA Advisory Council, whose mandate is to provide technical advice to the NASA Administrator, from November 2005 until his abrupt resignation on October 16,2008.
13.
Harrison Schmitt wrote a book entitled Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space in 2006.
14.
Harrison Schmitt has rejected the scientific consensus on climate change, which states that climate change is real, progressing, dangerous, and primarily human-caused.
15.
Harrison Schmitt has claimed that climate change is predominantly caused by natural factors, as opposed to human activity.
16.
Harrison Schmitt has argued that the risks posed by climate change are overstated and has instead supported the notion that climate change is a "tool" used to advocate for the expansion of the government.
17.
Harrison Schmitt resigned from the Planetary Society due to disagreements over their "Roadmap to Space Exploration", which recommended prioritizing earlier human missions to Mars over US lunar expeditions.
18.
In 2013, Harrison Schmitt co-authored an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal 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.
19.
Harrison Schmitt was one of five inductees into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1977.
20.
Harrison Schmitt was one of 24 Apollo astronauts who were inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1997.
21.
Harrison Schmitt is one of the astronauts featured in the 2007 documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.
22.
Harrison Schmitt contributed to the 2006 book NASA's Scientist-Astronauts by David Shayler and Colin Burgess.