Issue is published on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the moonflight of Apollo 17 and its Mission Commander Eugen Andrew Cernan, an American astronaut with Slovak origin. (His grandfather Štefan Černan emigrated to USA in 1900, his grandmother Anna in 1903.)
The mission of Apollo 1 7 took from 7th to 19th December, 1972. E. A. Cernan was the Mission Commander and Lunar Model Pilot. He spent 3 days on the moon together with Harrison H. Schmitt. They gathered 115 kg of moon minerals. Cernan served in three space missions. He and Thomas P. Stafford were assigned to the Geminy 9A backup crew in 1966, where they performed rendezvous of two spacecraft and worked in open space. Cernan was the first astronaut who made this exploration in the open space. In the following mission Apollo 10 in 1969, E. A. Cernan and T. P. Stafford flew the lunar module to within 15 kilometres of the surface of the moon in a full-scale dress rehearsal for Apollo 11, which landed on 21st, July, 1969. When E. A. Cernan visited Slovakia, he said: "I am glad, that I took a piece of Slovakia to the moon."
According to František Tököly
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