Harrison Schmitt

• 1. Introduction

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  Harrison Hagan Schmitt stepped off the Moon's surface in December 1972 and boarded the Lunar Module just before his commander, Gene Cernan. That sequence made Schmitt the next-to-last human being to leave the Moon. Cernan died in 2017, leaving Schmitt as the most recent living person to have set foot there. What makes Schmitt singular is not only that record, but the path that led him there: he was a geologist, not a fighter pilot, arriving at the Moon by a route no one had taken before. How does a boy from Silver City, New Mexico, become the only professional scientist to walk on another world? And what happened to the man who came back?

• 2. The Geologist's Road

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  Born on the 3rd of July 1935 in Santa Rita, New Mexico, Schmitt grew up in nearby Silver City and graduated from Western High School in 1953. He earned a Bachelor of Science in geology from the California Institute of Technology in 1957, then spent a year at the University of Oslo as a Fulbright Scholar. His doctoral work at Harvard University, completed in 1964, drew on geological field studies he conducted in Norway.

  Before NASA came calling, Schmitt worked at the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, developing the field techniques Apollo crews would eventually use on the lunar surface. That background placed him at a crossroads between two worlds: the scientific community that wanted the Moon studied properly, and the astronaut corps, which had been built almost entirely around military test pilots.

  In June 1965, NASA selected Schmitt as part of its first group of scientist-astronauts. His first year after selection was spent learning to fly jets at Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training. Once back in Houston, he shifted from student to teacher, training Apollo crews to recognize and interpret what they saw in lunar orbit and on the surface.

• 3. Pressure and Reassignment

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  In March 1970, Schmitt became the first of the scientist-astronauts assigned to a spaceflight, joining the Apollo 15 backup crew alongside Richard F. Gordon Jr. and Vance Brand. The standard flight rotation would have placed that crew on Apollo 18. Then, in September 1970, NASA canceled Apollo 18 and Apollo 19.

  The cancellations triggered an unusual episode of scientific advocacy. The community of lunar geologists felt so strongly that a trained scientist had to land on the Moon that they applied direct pressure on NASA to reassign Schmitt. The agency responded. In August 1971, Schmitt was assigned to Apollo 17 as Lunar Module Pilot, replacing Joe Engle.

  That decision carried weight beyond Schmitt's career. Apollo 17 was the last lunar mission, which meant the reassignment was, in effect, the only chance a professional geologist would ever have to walk on the Moon. The scientific community's lobbying had opened a single, closing window.

• 4. Twelve Hours on the Surface

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  Schmitt landed on the Moon with commander Gene Cernan in December 1972. As the only geologist in the astronaut corps, he collected the rock sample designated Troctolite 76535. Scientists have described it as, without doubt, the most interesting sample returned from the Moon. The sample became central evidence for the hypothesis that the Moon once possessed an active magnetic field.

  Schmitt also claims to have taken the photograph of Earth known as The Blue Marble, one of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence. His crewmates Cernan and Ronald Evans, the Command Module Pilot, made the same claim. NASA's official position credits all three together.

  After returning to Earth, Schmitt did not step away from the mission's science. He played an active role in documenting the Apollo geologic results and took on the task of organizing NASA's Energy Program Office. The geologist who had come last to the Moon spent years ensuring that what had been found there was properly understood.

• 5. From Orbit to Office

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  On the 30th of August 1975, Schmitt resigned from NASA to seek a seat in the United States Senate as a Republican representing New Mexico. He campaigned for fourteen months, with a focus on the future. In the Republican primary on the 1st of June 1976, he defeated Eugene Peirce, and then in the general election he faced two-term Democratic incumbent Joseph Montoya, winning 57% to 43%.

  In the Senate, Schmitt chaired the Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce. He sought a second term in 1982 against state Attorney General Jeff Bingaman. Bingaman's campaign targeted what he framed as inattention to local concerns; his slogan asked, "What on Earth has he done for you lately?" Combined with a deep recession, that message proved decisive. Schmitt lost 54% to 46%.

  A brief later attempt at public office ended quickly. In January 2011, Governor Susana Martinez appointed Schmitt as New Mexico's Secretary of Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources, but he gave up the position the following month after refusing to submit to a required background investigation. The El Paso Times had called him the "most celebrated" candidate for the post.

• 6. Moon Again, and Mars

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  After the Senate, Schmitt built a career as a consultant in business, geology, space, and public policy. He became an adjunct professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an advocate for using what the Moon contains. In 1997, he proposed the Interlune InterMars Initiative, listing among its goals the private-sector acquisition of lunar helium-3 as a fuel for nuclear fusion reactors.

  In November 2008, Schmitt resigned from the Planetary Society, citing disagreements with its published roadmap. He objected to the society's call to prioritize human missions to Mars over a return to the Moon, writing that he believed the fastest way to Mars ran through the Moon. He also quarreled with the society's stance on global warming and its support for international cooperation in spaceflight, which he felt would slow progress.

  From November 2005, Schmitt chaired the NASA Advisory Council, the body that provides technical advice to the NASA Administrator. He resigned from that position on the 16th of October 2008. He also serves as a visiting senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.

  In 2006, Schmitt published Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space, laying out in book form the argument he had made in policy circles for years: that the Moon's resources could support both a permanent human presence there and an eventual push to Mars.

• 7. Climate and Controversy

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  Schmitt has publicly rejected the scientific consensus that climate change is real, progressing, dangerous, and primarily caused by human activity. He has argued instead that natural factors predominate and that the risks are overstated.

  At the March 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, an event hosted by the Heartland Institute, Schmitt called climate change a "stalking horse for National Socialism." Later that year, appearing on Fox Business Network, he described the carbon dioxide concern as a "red herring." In a 2009 interview with radio host Alex Jones, he linked the environmental movement to the collapse of the Soviet Union, suggesting that former communist advocates had moved into environmentalism.

  In 2013, Schmitt co-authored an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal with William Happer, arguing that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is not significantly correlated with global warming. The piece also contended that higher CO2 levels would increase agricultural productivity by improving crop resistance to drought.

  His resignation letter to the Planetary Society stated that the "'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making." On the 29th of April 2018, a device named in his honor, the Schmitt Space Communicator SC-1x, launched aboard a Blue Origin New Shepard capsule. The 3-pound device, developed by Solstar, sent the first commercial two-way data and Wi-Fi service from space and transmitted the first commercial Twitter message from space, rising 66 miles above Earth before returning. It was later admitted to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.