Video: 'Launch of Apollo 17 TV Coverage' (video begins 13:02 before lift-off)
(Thursday, December 7, 1972, 12:33:00 a.m. EST) — Delayed for more than two hours by a minor technical error, Apollo 17 vaultedfrom launch pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida toward the moon early this morning, propelled by a fiery rocket on was man’s last voyage to another world.
The last flight of the historic Apollo series began as a thundering Saturn 5 rocket thrust Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt away from their home plant on a scientific expedition to fill in missing chapters of moon history.
Originally planned to launch on December 6, 1972, at 9:53 p.m. EST, it was delayed two hours and forty minutes due to an automatic cutoff in the launch sequencer at the T-30 second mark in the countdown.
The cause of the issue was quickly determined to be the launch sequencer’s failure to automatically pressurize the liquid oxygen tank in the third stage of the rocket; though launch control noticed this and manually caused the tank to pressurize, the sequencer did not recognize the fix and therefore paused the countdown.
Video: 'Apollo 17 Launch abort (and actual launch).'
The clock was reset and held at the T-22 minute mark while technicians worked around the malfunction in order to continue with the launch. This pause was the only launch delay in the Apollo program caused by a hardware issue.
The countdown then resumed, and the liftoff occurred at 12:33 a.m. EST on December 7, 1972.
Approximately 500,000 people observed the launch in the immediate vicinity of Kennedy Space Center, despite the early-morning hour. The launch was visible as far away as 500 miles, and observers in Miami, Florida, reported a “red streak” crossing the northern sky.
In the hours following the launch, Apollo 17 orbited the Earth while the crew spent time monitoring and checking the spacecraft to ensure its readiness to depart Earth orbit.
At 3:46 a.m. EST, the S-IVB third stage was reignited for the 351-second trans-lunar injection burn to propel the spacecraft towards the Moon.
