Editing Apollo 17 (section)

====Second EVA====
[[File:Ap17 strolling.ogv|thumb|Astronauts Cernan and Schmitt singing "I Was Strolling on the Moon One Day" to the words and tune of the 1884 song "[[The Fountain in the Park|While Strolling Through the Park One Day]]"]]
On December 12, awakened by a recording of "[[Ride of the Valkyries]]" played from Mission Control,<ref name="valkyries">{{cite web|url=https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/a17.eva2wake.html|title=EVA-2 Wake-up|publisher=NASA|editor-first=Eric M.|editor-last=Jones|editor2-first=Ken|editor2-last=Glover|work=Apollo 17 Lunar Surface Journal|date=May 20, 2014|access-date=January 7, 2022|archive-date=July 21, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190721171500/https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/a17.eva2wake.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Cernan and Schmitt began their second lunar excursion. The first order of business was to provide the rover's fender a better fix. Overnight, the [[flight controller]]s devised a procedure communicated by John Young: taping together four stiff paper maps<ref name="valkyries"/> to form a "replacement fender extension" and then clamping it onto the fender.<ref name="transcript">{{cite web |url=https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17_TEC.PDF |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17_TEC.PDF |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |title=Apollo 17 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription |publisher=NASA |date=December 1972|page=977}}</ref> The astronauts carried out the new fix which did its job without failing until near the end of the third excursion.{{sfn|Chaikin 1995|p=542}}{{sfn|Swift 2021|pp=1043–1045, 1085}} Cernan and Schmitt then departed for station 2—[[Nansen-Apollo (crater)|Nansen Crater]], at the foot of the South Massif. When they arrived, their range from the ''Challenger'' was 7.6 kilometers (4.7 miles, 25,029 feet<ref name="eva table">{{cite web |url=https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-30_Extravehicular_Activity.htm |title=Extravehicular Activity |publisher=NASA |access-date=January 6, 2022 |archive-date=November 18, 2004 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041118103553/https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-30_Extravehicular_Activity.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>). This remains the furthest distance any spacefarers have ever traveled away from the safety of a pressurizable spacecraft while on a planetary body,{{sfn|Swift 2021|pp=1053–1058}} and also during an EVA of any type.{{efn|Apart from the Apollo program's moonwalks (and a unique trio of deep-space EVAs conducted during the program's J-missions), all other spacewalks have been conducted in Low-Earth orbit, of which almost all have involved a safety tether keeping the spacefarer attached to the spacecraft by a short distance. The exceptions occurred in 1984 and 1994, when a series of seven EVAs involved untethered activity using the [[Manned Maneuvering Unit]] (MMU) and the [[Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue]] Unit (SAFER). Among this latter group, the greatest distance traveled away from a spacecraft during orbital flight was approximately 100 meters (320 feet), achieved by [[Bruce McCandless II|Bruce McCandless]] on [[STS-41-B]] during the first test of the MMU.<ref>{{cite web |last=Chaikin |first=Andrew |title=Untethered |date=October 2014 |publisher=Air and Space Magazine |url=https://www.airspacemag.com/space/untethered-180952792/ |access-date=January 6, 2022 |archive-date=December 14, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211214000747/https://www.airspacemag.com/space/untethered-180952792/ |url-status=live }}</ref>}} The astronauts were at the extremity of their "walkback limit", a safety constraint meant to ensure that they could walk back to the LM if the rover failed. They began a return trip, traveling northeast in the rover.{{sfn|Chaikin 1995|pp=527–530}}

At station 3, Schmitt fell to the ground while working, looking so awkward that Parker jokingly told him that NASA's switchboard had lit up seeking Schmitt's services for Houston's ballet group, and the site of station 3 was in 2019 renamed Ballet Crater.{{sfn|Swift 2021|pp=1062–1063}} Cernan took a sample at Station 3 that was to be maintained in vacuum until better analytical techniques became available, joking with the CAPCOM, Parker, about placing a note inside. The container remained unopened until 2022.<ref name="transcript"/><ref>{{cite web|last=Wamsley|first=Laurel|title=NASA is just now opening a vacuum-sealed sample it took from the moon 50 years ago|publisher=[[National Public Radio]]|access-date=March 11, 2022|url=https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085241811/nasa-moon-samples-apollo-artemis|date=March 8, 2022|archive-date=March 11, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220311021647/https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085241811/nasa-moon-samples-apollo-artemis|url-status=live}}</ref>

Stopping at station 4—[[Shorty (crater)|Shorty crater]]—the astronauts discovered orange soil, which proved to be very small beads of volcanic glass formed over 3.5 billion years ago.{{sfn|Cortright 2019|p=276}} This discovery caused great excitement among the scientists at Mission Control, who felt that the astronauts may have discovered a volcanic vent. However, post-mission sample analysis revealed that Shorty is not a volcanic vent, but rather an impact crater. Analysis also found the orange soil to be a remnant of a [[lava fountain]]. This lava fountain sprayed molten lava high into the lunar sky in the Moon's early days, some 3.5 billion years ago and long before Shorty's creation. The orange volcanic beads were droplets of molten lava from the fountain that solidified and were buried by lava deposits until exposed by the impact that formed Shorty, less than 20 million years ago.{{sfn|Chaikin 1995|pp=527–530}}

The final stop before returning to the LM was [[Camelot (crater)|Camelot crater]]; throughout the sojourn, the astronauts collected {{convert|34|kg|lbs}} of samples, took another seven gravimeter measurements, and deployed three more explosive packages.<ref name=astronautix/> Concluding the EVA at seven hours and thirty-seven minutes, Cernan and Schmitt had completed the longest-duration EVA in history to-date, traveling further away from a spacecraft and covering more ground on a planetary body during a single EVA than any other spacefarers.<ref name="eva table"/> The improvised fender had remained intact throughout, causing the president of the "Auto Body Association of America" to award them honorary lifetime membership.{{sfn|Swift 2021|pp=1070–1071}}