Apollo astronauts say man should return to moon

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Thirty years have passed, but no amount of time could dim the vivid memory Eugene Cernan has of being the last person to leave footprints on the moon.

"It's like you would want to freeze that moment and take it home with you. But you can't," Cernan recalled as he joined fellow Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt and other aviation pioneers to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the last manned mission to the moon.

As he made his way up the ladder to his spacecraft for the trip back to Earth, Cernan struggled for words to leave behind. He said he realized they wouldn't be as memorable as Neil Armstrong's comment when he became the first person to set foot on the moon: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Cernan's parting remark: "We now leave as we once came, and God willing we shall return with peace and hope for all mankind."

Cernan said at Friday's gathering it never occurred to him that 30 years later he would still be the last man on the moon.

"We knew Apollo 17 was going to be the final (Apollo) flight," he said. "And I knew that I would take the last steps on the moon. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that it would be the last time for a generation or so."

Other astronauts at the Friday night dinner at the estate of entrepreneur and space enthusiast Robert H. Lorsch included Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin of Apollo 11, T.R. Mattingly of Apollo 16 and James Lovell of Apollo 13.

The 1970 voyage that Lovell commanded was to have included a moon landing, but it had to be aborted after an oxygen tank ruptured aboard the moon-bound spacecraft. Lovell was portrayed by Tom Hanks in the movie Apollo 13, about the near-fatal mission.

Lovell noted that Apollo 18 and 19 were also planned as moon missions but that NASA canceled them, perhaps because of his mission's near-disaster.

"I think (canceling) was a grave mistake," he said Friday. "We had only touched a couple of places (on the moon); there were other places we could have gone to. The scientific community was very dissatisfied."

Cernan hopes to see that situation corrected.

"I came back from the mission and got on my soapbox," he said. "The press continued to ask me, 'How does it feel to be the tail of the dog, the last one over the fence.' I said, 'Apollo 17 is not the end; it's the beginning of a whole new era in the history of mankind. Not only will we go to the moon, but we'll be on our way to Mars by the turn of the century.' "

Space shuttle lands after record delay

CAPE CANAVERAL -- After a record-setting streak of bad landing weather, shuttle Endeavour returned to Earth on Saturday, bringing three astronauts home from a six-month space station voyage.

The spaceship swooped through a hazy afternoon sky and touched down on the runway, three days late.

With on-board supplies and fuel getting low, NASA began the day determined to land Endeavour, if not in Florida then in California. As if to seal the deal, Mission Control awakened the crew of seven with Perry Como's recording of I'll Be Home for Christmas.

But the weather finally cooperated at Cape Canaveral, and Mission Control instructed the shuttle pilots to aim for their home port.

The homecoming was especially joyous for American Peggy Whitson and Russians Valery Korzun and Sergei Treschev, who rocketed into orbit June 5.

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