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Thursday 4 November 2010 — 20:30 (Banquet Dinner)

From Apollo 17 to Future Space Programs

Harrison “Jack” Schmitt

Dr. Harrison Schmitt has the diverse experience of a geologist, pilot, astronaut, administrator, businessman, writer, and U. S. Senator. He received his B. S. from Caltech, studied as a Fulbright Scholar at Oslo, attended graduate school at Harvard and received his Ph.D. in geology in 1964. Selected for the Scientist-Astronaut program in 1965, Schmitt organized the lunar science training for the Apollo Astronauts, represented the crews during the development of hardware and procedures for lunar surface exploration, and oversaw the final preparation of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Descent Stage. He served as Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 17 – the last Apollo mission to the moon. On December 11, 1972, he landed in the Valley of Taurus-Littrow as the only scientist and the last of the only 12 humans to stand on the Moon.

In 1975, Harrison Schmitt was elected to a six-year term in the U.S. Senate, the only “natural scientist” in the Senate since Thomas Jefferson was Vice President of the United States. He was a member of the Senate Commerce, Banking, Appropriations, Intelligence, and Ethics Committees and held the position of Chairman of the Commerce Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space and of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. He later served on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the President’s Commission on Ethics Law Reform, the Army Science Board, as Co-Chairman of the International Observer Group for the 1992 Romanian elections, and as Vice Chairman of the U.S. delegation to the 1992 World Administrative Radio Conference in Spain.

Schmitt served as Chairman of the NASA Advisory Council from November 2005 to October 2008, leading its deliberations on issues related to Aeronautics, Audit and Finance, Biomedicine, Exploration (systems development), Human Capital, Science, and Space Operations. He presently is Chair Emeritus of The Annapolis Center (risk assessment) and is Adjunct Professor of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Current board memberships include Orbital Sciences Corporation, Edenspace Systems Corporation, and PhDx Systems, Inc., and, as a retired Director, he is a Member of the Corporation of the Draper Laboratory. He also has served as a member of the Energy Department’s Laboratory Operations Board.