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selected space history documents

Apollo 17 Kapton

Apollo 17, launched December 7, 1972, marked the last manned lunar landing mission. Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt lived on the Moon for 75 hours (22 hours and 4 minutes of which were outside the Lunar Module Challenger) while Ronald Evans orbited the Moon inside the Command Module America.

The embedded swatches of very thin pressure-sensitive Kapton polyimide tape were cut from America's thermal protection subsystem. Applied over the external ablator surface, the tape was coated with aluminum and oxidized silicon monoxide to protect the spacecraft from the extreme temperatures of outer space.

This acrylic was produced for the Cernan Corporation.

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