Nearly 54 years ago, Apollo 17 blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bound for the moon.

Standing alongside legendary astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Dick Gordon, a schoolboy from Lancashire was there to see the final manned lunar landing mission.

Ahead of the screening of a documentary about his experience, Preston astronomer Dermot Gethings recalled how, at 16 years old, he was hand picked by the United States embassy and Nasa to witness the launch.

“As it launched there was this incredible adrenaline and a shockwave that rattled every bone in your body,” said the now 70-year-old of the events of 7 December 1972. “It is the stuff that you dream about.”

While Gethings grew up in Frenchwood in Preston, he was shaped by the ongoing Cold War Space Race and the quest to put a man on the moon.

A childhood of sci-fi, The Thunderbirds and televised Nasa missions meant space was always a keen interest of his.

He said the “trigger moment” for his lifelong interest in astronomy was seeing the Milky Way in the night sky when he was 10.

“It hit me straight away – that was where I wanted to be,” he said.

“And I took a deep interest in space.”

From then on Gethings started an astronomy club at the former St John Fisher’s School in Preston – putting on talks both at his school and others and running public exhibitions.

After Gethings’ exhibitions were photographed by the Lancashire Evening Post, his life changed forever.

“A few months after the photographs were published I received a letter out of the blue from the United States Embassy in London,” he recalled.

“It said ‘We have a very special project to discuss with you regarding the forthcoming Apollo 17 mission’.”

Gethings was then told he was one of 16 UK students being invited for an interview at the embassy.

One of the students was to be selected by Nasa for an all-expenses paid,19-day trip to watch Apollo 17’s launch.

“I didn’t hear anything for a couple of weeks,” he said.

“When I got the letter of congratulations inviting me on the trip I couldn’t believe it – it was amazing!”

And after boarding his first aeroplane flight at Manchester Airport, he began a tour which would see him chatting to the first man on the moon Neil Armstrong, dining with senators in The White House, and getting behind-the-scenes looks at Nasa bases across a dozen states.

A memorable moment for Gethings came when he accidentally met Armstrong – the first man to have ever walked on the moon.

“On the day of the launch I stepped out of my motel room and clumsily walked into a tall gentleman,” Gethings recalled.

“I stood on his foot by accident and I was really embarrassed.

“I looked up and the man smiling down at me was Neil Armstrong!”

The pair walked downstairs together chatting about the upcoming launch, before Armstrong offered for his wife to take a photograph of them.

“I handed her my camera and Neil and I shook hands beside his car as she took the photograph – it was fantastic.”

In the early hours of the following morning Gethings sat just inches away from Armstrong in the VIP viewing box at the Kennedy Space Center when Apollo 17 lift-off occurred at 00:33 local time.

They were only three miles (5km) away from the launchpad.

“My heart was pumping in my chest,” he remembered.

“And when the vehicle cleared the tower suddenly you got punched in the chest by a shockwave.

“The ground beneath your feet was like an earthquake and the stands were rattling.

“And then you got hit by this incredibly painful crackling staccato snapping sound against the skin on your face.

“Minutes later Apollo 17 became a bright star moving across the sky and away from us.

“The experience was something one never forgets or can be equalled.”

During the 14-day mission the Apollo 17 astronauts, led by mission commander Eugene Cernan, performed three space walks on the lunar surface.

The third moonwalk, on 13 December, was the last time anybody walked on the moon.

Gethings was at the Space Center in Houston, Texas, when the astronauts on the moon’s surface spoke directly to the group of students before collecting a moon rock from the surface.

Once back on earth, that moonrock was split into 80 pieces – distributed to each student – and Gethings became the custodian of the UK’s Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock.

When Gethings returned home he presented the moonrock to Prime Minister Edward Heath at 10 Downing Street in July 1973.

Gethings has continued his love of astronomy ever since.

A fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and vice chair of Preston & District Astronomical Society, he also works with the Jeremiah Horrocks Institute of the University of Central Lancashire delivering talks.

The story of his journey to becoming custodian of the UK’s Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock is set to be told in a 30-minute documentary by University of Lancashire graduate Sarah Bullough.

Ahead of his big screen debut, Gethings said: “Space had been a passion all my life.

“To be brought over there to see places and meet people that you have only ever read about or seen on TV – it was the stuff of dreams.

“I knew what a privilege it was – even at the time.

“It will just be fantastic to see that journey on the big screen.”

The Custodian of the Goodwill Moon Rock will be shown at the University’s Preston Campus on Wednesday 14 October.

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