EXQUISITE PHOTO: President Obama Commemorates the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 17

40 years ago yesterday, Apollo 17, the last of the Apollo series of missions to land men on the on, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Lifting off just after midnight on Dec. 7, 1972, the Apollo 17 mission was the final of NASA's moon-bound manned flights — and the first night launch. The massive, 363-foot tall Saturn 5 rocket turned night into day as the long flames from its five powerful F-1 engines bathed the dark sky with a brilliant, bright-as-the-sun light that appeared to spectators to slowly climb skyward from the Kennedy Space Center...

Onboard the mighty moon booster were three astronauts. Eugene Cernan, a veteran of two prior missions including the "dress rehearsal" for the first lunar landing three years earlier, commanded Apollo 17 and flew the lunar module "Challenger" to a landing in the Taurus-Littrow valley.

Ronald Evans served as the pilot of the command module "America" that remained in lunar orbit until it was time for the three voyagers to return to Earth... And lunar module pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, who like Evans marked another first with the launch of Apollo 17 — his first time in space...

Also that year Barack Obama, who would later serve as the 44th president of the United States, lived with his mother and sister in Hawaii while his mother was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Hawaii.