Signed by Commander Tom Stafford
“there would have been no 11 had 10 not succeeded, and in a few critical moments on the fifth day of the mission, that was very much in doubt, as astronauts Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan found themselves in a near-fatal barrel roll just 50,000 feet above the lunar surface, in a tin can of a spacecraft that had no business surviving such a crisis.” — TIME
After a few expletives on the live network broadcast, they regained control just a few rolls away from a crash landing on the lunar surface.
And NASA knew they could not let maverick Lunar Module Pilot Gene Cernan get so close to the lunar surface without a rogue attempt to go the whole way, so they just provided enough fuel on the LM to do the “dress rehearsal” mission. Had Gene taken the LM to the surface, he would not have had the ability to return (as you see in this photo, with the ascent stage rising up to dock with the Command Module one last time, the spacecraft that will take them back to Earth).
This is also the only flown Lunar Module ascent stage that is still in orbit; the rest crashed into the moon, or in the case of Apollo 13, Earth.
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