Harrison “Jack” Schmitt

Elected to the United States Senate from New Mexico in 1976, Schmitt worked on legislation and New Mexico affairs related to technology, immigration, education, healthcare, commerce, and national security. As part of his consulting business in aerospace and earth science, he served on the President Reagan’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the Army Science Board, and the President H. W. Bush’s Ethics Commission and, from 2005 to 2008, chaired the NASA Advisory Council. Schmitt has received numerous honorary degrees from United States and Canadian universities. In 1983, Schmitt was a Director of Orbital Sciences Corporation/Orbital ATK, serving until 2018 when Northrop Grumman acquired the company. He also has served as a director of several corporations in the banking, technology, mining, and medical fields that included the Draper Corporation.

Beginning in 1996, he taught “Resources from Space” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is an Associate Fellow in the University’s Department of Engineering. Schmitt authored “Return to the Moon; Exploration, Enterprise and Energy in the Human Exploration of Space” and has published numerous scientific and public policy papers from 1964 to the present. Most recently, Schmitt and his co-authors published “Revisiting the field geology of Taurus-Littrow” in Icarus (2016). He travels extensively internationally as well as domestically. His account of the Apollo 17 Mission to the Moon is currently being published at americasuncommonsense.com as “Apollo 17: Diary of the 12th Man.” Schmitt lives in the intermountain West with his wife of over 30 years, Teresa Fitzgibbon, and a number of four-legged canine family members.