The last Moon landing was Apollo 17 in December 1972

The last crewed Moon landing was Apollo 17: its lunar module Challenger set down in the Taurus-Littrow valley on December 11, 1972, and commander Gene Cernan became the last person on the surface when he climbed back aboard on December 14. Twelve men walked on the Moon between 1969 and 1972, and none has since.

Cernan and geologist Harrison Schmitt stayed 75 hours, the longest of any Apollo crew, while Ronald Evans orbited above. Their three moonwalks totalled just over 22 hours, and the rover carried them 7.4 km from the lander, the farthest any Apollo crew ventured. Schmitt, a Ph.D. geologist, remains the only professional scientist to have walked on the Moon.

The crew returned 110.4 kg of rock and soil, and two finds still matter to lunar science. Orange soil, spotted by Schmitt at Shorty Crater, proved to be material from volcanic eruptions about 3.6 billion years ago. Troctolite 76535, at least 4.2 billion years old, holds evidence that the young Moon had a magnetic field driven by a liquid core, as Earth does.

“As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.” — Gene Cernan, December 14, 1972

The last landing, and the next one

• December 11, 1972: Challenger lands in the Taurus-Littrow valley.
• December 14, 1972: Cernan climbs back aboard, the last person to leave the lunar surface.
• 2027 (planned): NASA has turned Artemis III into a crewed test flight in low Earth orbit, not a landing.
• Early 2028: Artemis IV, now the next landing, aims to put two astronauts near the lunar south pole.

The return is later than many sources still say. That schedule would leave a gap of at least 55 years since Challenger.