In December 1972 a 130-year-old man born into slavery stood in a Florida swamp and watched the only nighttime Saturn V launch turn the sky red. Apollo 17 was the final crewed trip to the moon, and this episode explores the political fight that put geologist Harrison Schmitt in Joe Engle's seat, Gene Cernan's helicopter crash that nearly cost him command, and the launch sequencer glitch that halted the countdown at T-minus 30 seconds.

On the surface, Cernan snapped the rover's rear fender with his geology hammer, forcing an overnight fix with lunar maps, clamps, and duct tape that Houston delivered to the tune of Ride of the Valkyries. We follow the record 7.6-kilometer drive to the walk-back limit, the orange volcanic glass at Shorty Crater, the 4.5-billion-year-old troctolite 76535 that revealed an ancient lunar dynamo, Ron Evans's 148 hou ...