During Apollo 17's return flight to Earth, Evans performed an extravehicular activity (EVA) to retrieve film cassettes from the service module.

Evans started his secondary education at St Francis High School, but only attended for two months before the family moved to Topeka, Kansas to seek medical treatment for his brother Larry, who was diagnosed with liver cancer.

Evans attended Highland Park High School in Topeka, where he served on the Student Council, and was the president of the Science Club.

His family had little money, so in order to pay for his college education he secured a scholarship from the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC).

There he met Janet Merle (Jan) Pollom, who worked as a secretary at Forbes Air Force Base, and fell in love with her.

[9][2] On January 4, 1957, he reported to Naval Air Station Memphis, where he was taught instrument flying, culminating in a ground-controlled approach test.

[12] In January 1959, VF-142 boarded the brand new aircraft carrier USS Ranger, and set off on a cruise of the Western Pacific, which lasted until July 27, 1959.

The squadron was then assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, which departed for a tour of the Western Pacific on May 14, and returned to San Diego on December 15.

Fellow students there at the time included Robert H. Shumaker, Gene Cernan, Richard F. Gordon Jr., Paul J. Weitz and Jack Lousma.

[20] Cernan, Evans, Gordon and Shumaker were among the 34 finalists that NASA invited to undergo a week of medical and physiological tests at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

Evans was appointed the squadron maintenance officer, a position usually held by a lieutenant commander, and soon after received a spot promotion to that rank.

[27] The Ticonderoga departed for its next Western Pacific cruise in September 1965, but this was not a normal peacetime cruise; the Ticonderoga was assigned to Dixie Station off the coast of South Vietnam, from whence aircraft carriers launched strikes in support of American and South Vietnamese troops engaged in combat operations in the Vietnam War.

Ordnance was in short supply, so in order to inflate the number of sorties flown, aircraft seldom carried full bomb loads.

On November 12, a package of forms was received by his wife Jan in San Diego, with a cover letter that explained that BUPERS had recommended Evans to NASA.

A few weeks later a letter arrived informing Evans that once again he had made the short list, and was invited to come to Brooks Air Force Base for another round of tests.

This made it too dangerous to attempt a landing on the Ticonderoga, so he was ordered to proceed to Cam Ranh Air Force Base, Evans skidded on the wet Marston Mat runway and went 6.1 metres (20 ft) off its end.

Evans was taken to the office of the base commander, where a United States Air Force sergeant handed him orders to proceed to Texas for astronaut selection.

His temporary duty assignment only covered the tests, but BUPERS extended it to March 5, and then turned down his squadron commander's request for a replacement officer.

As it happened, Evans did not miss much action, as the Ticonderoga departed Subic Bay in the Philippines for Sasebo, Japan, on February 17, but it was back on Dixie Station by March 6.

In a ceremony on the Ticonderoga's flight deck on April 1, he was awarded gold 5/16 inch stars in lieu of his second, third, fourth and fifth Air Medals.

Evans preceded it, after taking a mail plane to the Philippines, and then a Military Air Transport Service flight to San Diego, which he reached on April 28.

[36] Usually low in seniority, they assembled the mission's rules, flight plan, and checklists, and kept them updated, and worked in the simulators developing procedures, especially those for emergency situations.

[45] The prime crew for Apollo 14 would be Alan Shepard, the Chief of the Astronaut Office as CDR, Edgar Mitchell as LMP and Stu Roosa as CMP.

[62] The flight plan kept Evans busy, making him so tired he overslept one morning by an hour, despite the efforts of Mission Control to awaken him.

[63] While Cernan and Schmitt landed on the Moon and explored the Taurus–Littrow valley, Evans remained in lunar orbit on board the Command Module America, completing assigned work tasks which required visual geological observations, hand-held photography of specific targets, and the control of cameras and other highly sophisticated scientific equipment carried in the service module's SIM bay.

[66] The instruments in the SIM bay functioned without significant hindrance during the orbital portion of the mission, though the two antennas of the lunar sounder as well as the mapping camera encountered minor issues.

On the way back to Earth, Evans completed a one-hour, five-minute, 44-second extravehicular activity, during which he made three trips to the scientific instrument module (SIM) bay to retrieve lunar sounder film, the panoramic camera, and three camera mapping cassettes, and completed a personal inspection of the equipment bay area.

They were driven around the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum at Super Bowl VII, they met Elvis Presley in Las Vegas and were hosted by President Richard Nixon at the White House and Camp David.

Asked to give a speech at a cosmonauts' dinner event, he recited Humpty Dumpty in Russian, which his hosts found hilarious.

[69][1] He served as a member of the operations and training group within the Astronaut Office, responsible for launch and ascent phases of the Space Shuttle program.