Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission, landed on the Moon.

Apollo 17 was the eleventh and final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the sixth and most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon, while Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans orbited above. Schmitt was the only professional geologist to land on the Moon; he was selected in place of Joe Engle, as NASA had been under pressure to send a scientist to the Moon. The mission's heavy emphasis on science meant the inclusion of a number of new experiments, including a biological experiment containing five mice that was carried in the command module.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo was conceived during Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. It was conceived in 1960 as a three-person spacecraft during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal for the 1960s of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in an address to Congress on May 25, 1961.

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It orbits around Earth at an average distance of 384,399 kilometres (238,854 mi); about 30 times Earth's diameter. Its orbital period and its rotation period are synchronized at 29.5 days by Earth's gravity pulling on the Moon. This makes the Moon tidally locked to Earth, always facing it with the same side. The Moon's gravitational pull produces tidal forces on Earth, which are the main driver of Earth's tides.