Apollo 16 spent three days on Earth’s Moon in April 1972. It was important for NASA in scientific terms, but also came at a time when much of the public was burned out by the repeated successes of the Apollo program and had started taking them for granted. Thus, it did not receive the sort of renown that, say, a similar mission now, after over forty years of no human presence on the Moon, might receive. In many schools around the country, the mission was shown on television sets specially set up for the occasion, leaving an indelible impression on students.

Apollo 16 was the fifth lunar landing mission out of six (Apollo 11-17 landed on the Moon except for Apollo 13, which aborted in mid-flight). It remains famous in scientific circles for deploying and using an ultraviolet telescope as the first lunar observatory. Naturally, there was the standard collecting of rocks and data on the mysterious lunar highlands where the ship landed.

This picture is of the Earth taken from a lunar observatory set up by Apollo 16. This false-color picture shows how the Earth glows in ultraviolet (UV) light. UV light is so blue humans can’t see it, but it definitely is there if you have the ability to see it. Very little UV light is transmitted through the Earth’s atmosphere but what sunlight does make it through can cause a sunburn. The Far UV Camera / Spectrograph deployed and left on the Moon by the crew of Apollo 16 took the above picture. The part of the Earth facing the Sun reflects much UV light, but perhaps more interesting is the side facing away from the Sun. Here bands of UV emission are also apparent. These bands are the result of aurora and are caused by charged particles expelled by the Sun spiraling to Earth along magnetic field lines. Image credit: NASA, Apollo 16, George Carruthers (NRL), and the Far UV Camera Team

Astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke, Jr. were the two astronauts on the surface of the Moon collecting rock samples at the Descartes landing site. The Lunar Roving Vehicle allowed the astronauts to travel great distances to investigate surface features and collect rocks. High above, Thomas K. Mattingly orbited in the Command Module.

Apollo 16 Lunar Rover Grand Prix

“I had one dream that was very vivid. We were driving the rover up to the north, you didn’t feel like you were out there. It was untouched, the serenity of it had a pristine purity about it. We crossed a hill, I felt ‘gosh, we’ve been here before’. There was a set of tracks in front of us, we asked Houston if we could follow the tracks and they said ‘yes’. So we turned and followed the tracks. It went on for about an hour or so and we found this vehicle, it looked just like the rover with two people in it and they looked just like me and John. They’d been there for thousands of years.”

—  Astronaut Charles Duke of Apollo 16 described a dream he had on the Moon in 1972.

The Apollo 16 Lunar Module “Orion” is photographed from a distance by astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr., Lunar Module pilot, aboard the moving Lunar Roving Vehicle. Astronauts Duke and Commander John W. Young were returning from the third Apollo 16 extravehicular activity (EVA-2). The RCA color television camera mounted on the LRV is in the foreground. A portion of the LRV’s high-gain antenna is at top left.

April 23, 1972: On his third and final trip to the moon, Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke left a small family photo on the lunar surface. The portrait – wrapped in a clear plastic bag — shows Duke with his wife Dorothy, and their two sons Charles and Thomas, and it has been there since 1972. He watched the picture turn brown and disintegrate in the unfiltered sun’s rays moments after he snapped the photo.

2021