Video: Watch as Gene Cernan takes a tumble on the moon, in honor of Apollo 17’s 51-year anniversary

Apollo 17 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Dec. 7, 1972. This historic lunar mission serves as the most recent moon landing and was the first time a trained geologist walked on the moon, per the Air and Space Museum.

In this video, Gene Cernan hops along the surface of moon, loses his balance and falls flat on his face. Luckily, the gravity is a lot less on the moon, so it took him a couple seconds to fall all the way down and only a couple more to get back on his feet. The video shows him hop out of view after recovering from his little tumble.

What did Apollo 17 accomplish?

NASA summarized the mission’s accomplishments:

• “Apollo 17 hosted the first scientist-astronaut to land on moon: Harrison Schmitt.

• “The sixth automated research station was set up.

• “The lunar rover vehicle traversed a total of 30.5 kilometers.

• “Lunar surface-stay time was 75 hours, and lunar orbit time 17 hours.

• “Astronauts gathered 110.4 kilograms, or 243 pounds, of material.”

Why has there not been another moon landing?

The two main reasons no one has set foot on the moon since 1972 are a lack of money and different priorities, according to The Economic Times.

In the 1960s, the Apollo program cost $25.4 billion, which “translates to over $150 billion in today’s currency,” TS2 Space wrote.

Those funds went to developing new technology, spacecraft construction, astronaut training and several manned and unmanned missions paving the way for Apollo 11. At the time, “this staggering expense was justified by the Cold War-era competition with the Soviet Union, as space became a critical domain for demonstrating technological and ideological supremacy,” per TS2 Space.