Picture of the Week: Sweet Seventeen

That is a NASA file image of astronaut Harrison "Jack" Schmitt (now an active supporter of helium-3 mining on the Moon) in Mare Serenitatis alongside he and Eugene Cernan's rover during the Apollo 17 mission, in which astronauts spent by far the most amount of time exploring the surface, roving for 21 miles instead of the hundreds of yards previous astronauts had been limited to.

Check out the selenographic landmarks of the mission on Google Moon (Luna's equivalent of Google Maps), and the great Discovery Channel documentary miniseries "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions" includes a particularly neat (if brief) look at the mission.

The mission occured 27 years ago this week (December 7th-19th, 1972), and is the last time a man walked on the moon (until, of course, approximately 2020, when most likely a taikonaut will become the 13th man on the moon).

"As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come — but we believe not too long into the future — I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record — that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."
– Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 Commander. Last man to walk on the moon, December 14, 1972.

First-ever Chinese Spacewalk (News)

That is a full video of the first-ever Chinese spacewalk, conducted by the CNSA on September 27th (technically yesterday in the U.S., given the international date line).

The 'taikonaut' (as Chinese astronauts are called) was Zhai Zhigang, a fighter pilot and son of a snack seller.

Clearly, this is an enormous (and particularly visible) step forward for the Chinese space program, and perhaps something of a wake-up call to the fact that the official language of the Moon could end up being Chinese. ;)

Below is a video with a translation of Zhigang's comments, and a narration: