Flown Apollo 17 Checklist Page (Ex Gene Cernan Collection)
 
Highlights:
     🚀 Flown and Mission-Used on Apollo 17
     🧑‍🚀 From Gene Cernan's Flown CSM Updates Checklist
      
This page originates from Gene Cernan's complete flown Command Service ModuleUpdates checklist (Part No. SKB32100123-330, S/N 1001) carried aboard Apollo 17, used by the entire crew and heavily annotated. Boldly certified and signed on the cover by Cernan in blue felt tip, "Flown on Apollo XVII, Gene Cernan."
 
Throughout the duration of the mission, large lists of numbers, otherwise known as PADs (Pre-Advisory Data), were read by mission control up to the crew to provide them with the necessary information to accomplish a given maneuver. Houston had decided long ago that, in case of loss of communications, the astronauts should never be without the coordinates to return to Earth manually.
 
P24 Lunar Landmark Tracking: The P24 landmark checklist was used for lunar landmark tracking on Apollo 17 — a critical navigation method used to verify the spacecraft's position during its journey to and from the Moon. This procedure ensured that the Command and Service Module (CSM) maintained a precise trajectory, particularly during lunar orbit and the delicate rendezvous and docking phases.
 
P24 was a program executed by the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) to perform what is known as landmark tracking. This method involved observing specific, preselected features on the lunar surface—such as craters or mountain peaks—with the CSM 60× star-sighting telescope. These landmarks were chosen for their distinctiveness and precise location in the lunar coordinate system. By measuring the angular positions of these landmarks relative to the spacecraft, the AGC could refine its estimate of the spacecraft’s "state vector," which described its position and velocity in space. This data was essential for identifying and correcting deviations in the spacecraft’s trajectory.
 
This technique was designed to minimize the effect of the irregular lunar gravity field on landing accuracy. It began to be developed on Apollo 8, the first human mission to the Moon in 1968. On Apollo 17, Evans’ manual sextant tracking of specific small craters near the landing site would be used to improve Mission Control’s data on the location of the Taurus-Littrow landing site relative to the spacecraft’s orbit. Mission Planning and Analysis Division previously had determined the position of these craters relative to the center of mass of the Moon, using photographs and orbital tracking data from the Apollo 15 mission. By repetitively marking on these craters in the CSM's P24 Landmark Tracking Program, Evans tied his orbit more closely to the landing site and the center of mass of the Moon.
 
These data would be processed by Mission Control, adjusted for the separation of the two spacecraft, and incorporated into the LM's state vector just prior to Powered Descent Initiation early in the next orbit, an orbit later than on previous Apollo missions. This process made it possible to shrink the errors associated with all trajectory variables so that Taurus-Littrow became an acceptable landing site for the mission.
 
The numbers that would have been entered into this checklist were the times of the various points marked in the P24 tracking profile:
 
T-1: This is the time when the landmark, in this case Index crater, will be on the horizon. It is not the time it will be visible through the sextant optics.
 
T-2: This is the time when the target can be acquired in the sextant and is when the CSM begins to pitch down.
 
TCA: This is when the CSM will be closest to the target.
 
T-3: This is the time when the target will fall out of the sextant's field of view.

The CSM would keep a pitched-down attitude with respect to the local vertical throughout the entire tracking pass. To achieve this, the spacecraft made a slow pitch-down rotation with respect to its stellar inertial frame of reference, throughout the entire period. This kept the Index crater within the range of the sextant, even as it passed rather quickly below.

In his provenance letter, Cernan writes: "This Apollo checklist has remained a treasured part of my personal space collection for thirty three years, ever since NASA presented it to me in 1973, after my return from the Moon... The complete checklist remains both a historic tool and a rare example of an astronaut flight certified flown artifact from the Apollo era missions."  Single flown checklist pages are highly sought-after and desirable rarities—especially when they originate from the Commander of the final Apollo mission!

Supporting Documents:
 
Accompanied by a copy of the signed provenance letter from Mission Commander Gene Cernan
 
COA from the owner of the complete checklist attesting that this page originates from Scott's flown checklist
 
Copy of the original RR Auction Record.
 
Don’t miss this chance to own a fantastic mission-critical flown checklist page that spent six days in lunar orbit aboard the Apollo 17 Command Module "America"!
 
Don’t just dream about space exploration—own a piece of it!

*Colors may vary slightly from what you see on the screen