It was shortly after midnight on December 7, 1972, when a groggy-eyed little girl followed her parents and siblings to the living room of their suburban home 30 miles north of Detroit and sat in front of a large box of a TV that was buzzing to life. Outside the moon was waxing gibbous, a perfect landing spot for a new set of space invaders to arrive a few days later from the blue planet 238,900 miles away. Catherine Rivers was just 5 years old when Apollo 17 lit up the dark around the launch complex at Kennedy Space Center, the 363-foot-tall Saturn V rocket riding its moon boosters out of Earth's atmosphere. It was the first and only manned Apollo mission to launch at night, and the last to send humans to the lunar surface. Catherine sat mesmerized by the television screen, not knowing that her life, and her future career at the University of Virginia School of Engineering, would be tied to this historic mission and the secrets it would hold for nearly 50 years.