Apollo 17, the eleventh and last Apollo mission, was launched shortly after midnight on December 7, 1972. The crew consisted of Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt (the only scientist-astronaut to fly an Apollo mission.) This was the first and only time in the history of the Apollo program in which the families of the astronauts were present at "astronaut egress" - the point at which the astronauts came out with their spacesuits on to board the van that took them to the launch pad.

I had the good fortune of witnessing the launch - the only night launch of Apollo - from the press area. I took slides (a roll of Kodachrome and a roll of Ektachrome) with my Minolta SRT-101. Below are scans of those nearly 48-year old slides.

At the bottom of the gallery, I have added scans of a short article that I wrote about the launch. It was published in Technology Review a couple of months later. Unless your eyes are a lot better than mine, you should view them in large or original size.

And, just to complete the picture, I also scanned my press pass.