Slovak blood has circulated and is circulating in the bodies of many prominent personalities of the world astronautics. Mary Ellen Weber and long-time NASA employee Milan Kobulský are proud of their Slovak origin. The greatest personality of Slovak-American astronautics is undoubtedly Eugene Andrew Cernan. It is in his honour that we have built the small Eugene Cernan Observatory – ŤahyŇASA – in Ťahyňa in the Kasigarda. We installed a rotating motorized cupola with a diameter of 3m, in which we installed a powerful astronomical telescope for observing the day or night sky. Since we have very little light smog in Ťahyňa, the observing conditions are excellent!
American astronaut Eugene Andrew Cernan was born on March 14, 1934 in Chicago, where he grew up with his sister Dolores Ann in the family of Andrew G. Cernan and Rose A. Cihlar. His paternal grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from the village of Vysoká nad Kysucou in 1903. His maternal grandparents had Czech roots. After graduating from high school, he began his studies at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1956. In May 1961, he married Barbara J. Atchley, and in June of that year he began his studies at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he earned a degree in aeronautical engineering in January 1964. In March 1963, he became the father of a daughter, Teresa “Tracy” Dawn.
He was selected for the NASA astronaut corps on October 17, 1963. He flew into space a total of three times. First in 1966 (June 3-6) as part of the Gemini 9A mission and later in 1969 (May 18-26) as part of the Apollo 10 mission. However, the mission that made the most history is the Apollo 17 mission, which he commanded. Cernan was also a member of the backup crews of the Gemini 12, Apollo 7 and Apollo 14 missions.
Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the Moon to date, launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, on December 7, 1972. Cernan, along with geologist Harrison H. Schmitt, landed the lunar lander Challenger in the Taurus-Littrow valley on the southeastern edge of the Sea of Serenity on December 11, 1972. During three ascents off the lunar module, they spent a record 22 hours 3 minutes and 57 seconds on the lunar surface, drove more than 35 km with the lunar rover, and collected more than 115 kg of lunar regolith samples. Cernan also became the last of the twelve astronauts to leave their footprints on the lunar surface and the only one to fly to the Moon twice.
The pair of astronauts left the lunar surface on December 14, 1972, and returned to Earth on December 19, 1972, along with a third crew member, Ronald E. Evans, pilot of the America command module in lunar orbit. Cernan has always been proud of his ancestry and has not forgotten the land of his ancestors. He visited Slovakia three times in 1974, 1994 and 2004. Cernan died on January 16, 2017 and is buried in Houston, Texas.
