Early years Cernan was born on March 14, 1934, in
Chicago, Illinois; he was the son of Andrew George Cernan and Rose Cernan ( Cihlar). His father was of
Slovak descent, and his mother was of
Czech ancestry. He had one older sister, Dolores Ann. Cernan grew up in the Illinois towns of
Bellwood and
Maywood. He was a
Boy Scout and earned the rank of
Second Class. After attending McKinley Elementary School in Bellwood, and graduating from
Proviso Township High School in Maywood in 1952, he studied at
Purdue University and served as treasurer of the
Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. He was also president of the Quarterdeck Society and the
Scabbard and Blade, as well as a member of the
Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, the military ball committee and the Skull and Crescent leadership honor society. After his sophomore year, he accepted a partial Navy
ROTC scholarship that required him to serve aboard between his junior and senior years. In 1956, Cernan received a
Bachelor of Science degree in
electrical engineering; his final
GPA was 5.1 out of 6.0.
Navy service Cernan was commissioned an
Ensign in the
U.S. Navy through the
Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) at Purdue in 1956, and was initially stationed on the . Cernan changed to active duty and attended flight training at
Whiting Field, Florida,
Barron Field, Texas,
NAS Corpus Christi, Texas, and
NAS Memphis, Tennessee. Following flight training on the
T-28 Trojan,
T-33 Shooting Star, and
F9F Panther, Cernan became a
Naval Aviator, flying
FJ-4 Fury and
A-4 Skyhawk jets in Attack Squadrons
126 and
113.
NASA career In October 1963, NASA selected Cernan as one of the
third group of astronauts to participate in the
Gemini and
Apollo space programs. Gemini 9A encountered a number of problems; the original target vehicle exploded during launch and the planned docking with a substitute target vehicle was made impossible by the failure of a protective shroud to separate after launch.
Apollo program Apollo 10 during
Apollo 10 press conference Cernan was selected as backup lunar module pilot for
Apollo 7—although that flight carried no lunar module. Standard crew rotation put him in place as the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 10—the final dress rehearsal mission for the first Apollo lunar landing—on May 18–26, 1969. During the
Apollo 10 mission, Cernan and his commander,
Tom Stafford, piloted the Lunar Module
Snoopy in lunar orbit to within of the lunar surface, and successfully executed every phase of a lunar landing up to final powered descent. This provided NASA planners with critical knowledge of technical systems and lunar gravitational conditions to enable
Apollo 11 to land on the Moon two months later. Apollo 10 holds the record for the highest speed attained by any crewed vehicle at —more than —during its return from the Moon on May 26, 1969. Cernan moved back into the Apollo rotation as commander of the backup crew of Cernan,
Ronald E. Evans, and
Joe Engle for
Apollo 14, putting him in position through normal crew rotation to command his own crew on
Apollo 17. Escalating budget cutbacks for NASA brought the number of future missions into question. After the Apollo 18 and Apollo 19 missions were cancelled in September 1970, pressure from the scientific community mounted to shift
Harrison Schmitt, the sole professional geologist in the active Apollo roster of astronauts, to the crew of Apollo 17, the final scheduled Apollo mission. In August 1971, NASA named Schmitt as the lunar module pilot for Apollo 17, which meant the original LM pilot
Joe Engle lost his chance to walk on the Moon. Cernan fought to keep his crew together; given the choice of flying with Schmitt as LMP or seeing his entire crew removed from Apollo 17, Cernan chose to fly with Schmitt. Cernan eventually came to have a positive evaluation of Schmitt's abilities; he concluded that Schmitt was an outstanding LM pilot while Engle—notwithstanding his outstanding record as an aircraft test pilot—was merely an adequate one. Cernan's role as commander of Apollo 17 closed out the Apollo program's lunar exploration mission with a number of record-setting achievements. During the three days of Apollo 17's surface activity (11–14 December 1972), Cernan and Schmitt performed three EVAs for a total of about 22 hours of exploration of the
Taurus–Littrow valley. Their first EVA alone was more than three times the length astronauts
Neil Armstrong and
Buzz Aldrin spent outside the LM on
Apollo 11. During this time, Cernan and Schmitt covered more than using the
Lunar Roving Vehicle and spent a great deal of time collecting geologic samples (including a record of samples, the most of any Apollo mission) that would shed light on the Moon's early history. Cernan piloted the rover on its final sortie, recording a maximum speed of , giving him the unofficial lunar
land speed record. As Cernan prepared to climb the ladder for the final time, he spoke these words, currently the last spoken by a human being standing on the lunar surface: Cernan's status as the last person to walk on the Moon means
Purdue University is the
alma mater of both the first person to walk on the Moon (
Neil Armstrong) and the most recent. Cernan is one of only three astronauts to travel to the Moon twice, along with
Jim Lovell and
John Young. He is also one of only
twelve people to have walked on the Moon, as well as the only person to have flown in two different Apollo Lunar Modules in space while not docked to the
Apollo Command and Service Module, both times near the Moon.
Post-NASA activities September 13, 2012 In 1976, Cernan retired from the Navy with the rank of
captain and went from NASA into private business, becoming
Executive Vice President of Coral Petroleum Inc. before starting his own company, The Cernan Corporation, in 1981. In 1999, with co-author
Donald A. Davis, he published his memoir
The Last Man on the Moon, which is about his naval and NASA career. He is featured in the 2007 space exploration documentary
In the Shadow of the Moon in which he said, "truth needs no defense" and "nobody can take those footsteps I made on the surface of the Moon away from me". Cernan also contributed to the 2007
book of the same name. Cernan and Neil Armstrong testified before
U.S. Congress in 2010 in opposition to the cancellation of the
Constellation program, which had been initiated during the
George W. Bush administration as part of the
Vision for Space Exploration with the aim of returning humans to the Moon and
eventually Mars, but was deemed underfunded and unsustainable by the
Augustine Commission in 2009. Cernan paired his criticism of the cancellation of Constellation with expressions of skepticism about
Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) and
Commercial Crew Development (CCDev), NASA's planned replacements for that program's role in supplying cargo and crew to the
International Space Station. Such companies, Cernan warned, "do not yet know what they don't know." Cernan's view of commercial space companies—in particular
SpaceX, which participates in both programs—underwent a positive shift after being debriefed by SpaceX venture capitalist
Steve Jurvetson as part of his effort to obtain the signatures of nine Apollo astronauts on a photograph meant as a gift to SpaceX founder
Elon Musk to commemorate the first successful SpaceX cargo mission to the ISS in 2012. Eventually, Cernan was won over and signed the photograph; "As I told him these stories of heroic entrepreneurship, I could see his mind turning." Jurvetson wrote; "He found a reconciliation: 'I never read any of this in the news. Why doesn't the press report on this?'" Cernan gave a
eulogy at Armstrong's funeral in 2012. In 2014, Cernan appeared in the documentary
The Last Man on the Moon, made by British filmmaker Mark Craig and based on Cernan's 1999 memoir of the same title. The film received the Texas Independent Film Award from
Houston Film Critics Society and the Movies for Grownups Award from
AARP The Magazine.
Personal life Cernan was married twice and had one biological child and two step-children. His first wife was Barbara Jean Atchley, a flight attendant for
Continental Airlines, whom he married in 1961. They had one daughter, Tracy (born in 1963);
Tracy's Rock is named for her. The couple separated in 1980 and divorced in 1981. They remained friends. His second marriage was to Janis Ellen "Nanna" Cernan (
née Jones; 1939–2021), which lasted for nearly 30 years from 1987 until his death. Cernan gained two step-daughters, Kelly and Danielle.
Death Cernan died in a hospital in Houston on January 16, 2017, at the age of 82. His funeral was held at
St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston. He was buried with
full military honors at
Texas State Cemetery, the first astronaut to be buried there, in a private service on January 25, 2017. ==Organizations==