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Commander Gene Cernan's Apollo 17 EVA-2 cuff checklist, carried and used extensively on the lunar surface during the second extravehicular activity of the final Apollo mission. On December 12, 1972, Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt departed the lunar module Challenger for EVA-2, this checklist strapped to the cuff of Cernan’s left wrist, and embarked on the longest single moonwalk of the Apollo program—7 hours, 37 minutes, and 22 seconds on the surface. They covered roughly 19.5 kilometers by rover and reached a maximum distance of 7.6 kilometers from the LM at Station 2, near Nansen Crater at the foot of the South Massif—the farthest any human had then traveled from a spacecraft. On the return leg, while working the rim of Shorty Crater, Schmitt's astonished radio call—that he had found 'orange soil'—electrified Mission Control and would later be recognized as one of the most significant discoveries of the entire Apollo program.
Before they could depart on this traverse, however, Cernan and Schmitt had to solve a problem: during EVA-1, Cernan's spacesuit had caught the right rear fender of the Lunar Rover and torn it away, and without a fender the mesh wire wheels threw a continuous 'rooster tail' of abrasive lunar dust over the crew, their equipment, and their cameras. During the crew's rest period, Mission Control devised a fix using spare LRV maps, lunar module brackets, and gray tape, and radioed the instructions up the next morning. Cernan recorded them in his own hand on the blank rear page of this checklist:
"15 x 19 TAPE BOTH SIDES — TAPE X ROLL ON LONG AXIS — TAB UTILITY CLAMPS — FRONT EDGE OVER AXLE — INBOARD CLAMP OF AXLE — OUTBOARD FURTHER AFT."
This is the only Apollo cuff checklist known to bear handwritten instructions that were themselves critical to the mission's success. Following these directions, Cernan and Schmitt fashioned a replacement fender from a laminated lunar maps, taping and clamping them into place—a repair that protected the crew and their vehicle for the remainder of the mission. The repaired fender itself now resides in the collection of the National Air and Space Museum.
The checklist is a comprehensive guide to the EVA, spiral-bound with tabbed section dividers for each geology station, twelve lunar traverse maps, LRV deployment and closeout procedures, EMU (spacesuit) donning and malfunction checklists, and LCRU (ground-commanded television assembly) operations. As with the EVA-1 and EVA-3 checklists, its pages are interspersed with a cartoon added by the backup crew as an Apollo tradition—here, a spacesuited astronaut-dog character balanced atop a crate marked "ROCKS," captioned "RATS!," accompanying an instruction to deploy the Cosmic Ray Detector "shade side first." The checklist consists of 25 spiral-bound double-sided leaves measuring 3.5″ x 2.5″, attached to an aluminum wrist brace marked with part number "SEB33100302-302" and serial number "1030." The original black Velcro wristband remains attached, marked "P/N SEB12100030-201, S/N 1094 ASSY," and the pages show the gray smudging of lunar dust consistent with extensive use on the surface.
The checklist is complete and structurally sound, with the original wristband and aluminum brace intact; several pages are smudged with lunar dust consistent with surface use, as is expected and desirable for this class of artifact.
Accompanied by a signed letter of provenance from Gene Cernan, dated December 31, 2013, certifying that the checklist "was carried and used extensively outside on the lunar surface during my 2nd EVA on the Moon at the Valley of Taurus-Littrow." Cernan further recounts the South Massif traverse, Rover fender repair, Shorty Crater orange-soil discovery, and the pervasive lunar dust still evident on the checklist, concluding: "This cuff checklist represents one of the rarest of Apollo artifacts as a piece of vital equipment that I used during my excursions on the lunar surface in the Valley of Taurus-Littrow." Cernan states that NASA returned the checklist to him in 1973 and that he retained it thereafter as a personal memento of his time on the moon. A second letter signed by Cernan carries some additional recollections of the LRV fender repair.
