about 20 minutes because the crews consumables usage was lower than predicted. After opening the hatch and reuniting with Mattingly, the crew transferred the samples Young and Duke had collected on the surface into the CSM for transfer to Earth. coarse align mode and set the appropriate alarms. The inbound The command module reentered Earths atmosphere (400,000 feet altitude) at docked with the CM at 177:41:18 at an altitude of 65.6 n mi, after being [6], Flight directors were Pete Frank and Philip Shaffer, first shift, Gene Kranz and Donald R. Puddy, second shift, and Gerry Griffin, Neil B. Hutchinson and Charles R. Lewis, third shift. NASA later confirmed the object to be a piece of the first stage of the SaturnV that had launched Apollo 16 into space. The command module suffered a three-inch gash in one panel. Island Naval Air Station, San Diego, for deactivation, where it arrived at 00:00 [125] Likely because of a failure by the crew to activate a certain switch in the LM before sealing it off, it tumbled after separation. They then drove in a northwesterly The crater The burn to alter the CSM's orbit to that desired for the subsatellite had been cancelled; as a result, the subsatellite lasted just over a month in orbit, far less than its anticipated one year. 64.2 by 40.1 n mi. They drove there in the LRV, traveling 3.8km (2.4mi) from the LM. The CM was recovered 62 minutes later. It was decided that Young and Duke would visually inspect the boom after undocking the LM from the CSM. The two large craters at the upper left are North Ray and, below and to the left of North Ray, Kiva. [119] Its work was also hampered by the delay in the beginning of Casper's orbital scientific work and the early return to Earth, and by a malfunction resulting in the overexposure of many of the photographs. [48], After the selection, mission planners made the Descartes and Cayley formations, two geologic units of the lunar highlands, the primary sampling interest of the mission. [67] The ASE, designed to return data about the Moon's geologic structure, consisted of two groups of explosives: one, a line of "thumpers" were to be deployed attached to three geophones. 000:09:23.60. Sadly, David Scott and Jim Irwin did not reach St. George crater. [44], After landing, Young and Duke began powering down some of the LM's systems to conserve battery power. The film was returned to Earth. in Naval At 078:33:45.04, that deployed from Apollo 15 was deployed at 196:02:09 during the 62nd Changes would be John Young, the mission commander, was 41 years old and a captain in the Navy at the time of Apollo 16. The vehicle continued to move, but the front wheels were digging into could be used to study the nature of the lunar interior structure. overall lunar module mission operations was demonstrated after the failure selenological inspection, survey, and sampling of materials and surface For the exercise at the Nevada Test Site, where the massive craters left by nuclear explosions simulated the large craters to be found on the Moon, all participants had to have security clearance and a listed next-of-kin, and an overflight by CMP Mattingly required special permission. [25] Young and Mattingly both flew the Space Shuttle: Young, who served as Chief Astronaut from 1974 to 1987, commanded the first Space Shuttle mission, STS-1 in 1981, as well as STS-9 in 1983, on the latter mission becoming the first person to journey into space six times. . 58.1 n mi. [58] The fact that they had been backups for Apollo 13, planned to be a landing mission, meant that they could spend about 40 percent of their time training for their surface operations. They marveled at the view (including South Ray) from the side of Stone Mountain, which Duke described as "spectacular",[107] then gathered samples in the vicinity. crests. conditions at insertion, 000:11:56.21 (S-IVB cutoff plus 10 seconds to account ascent stage engine for lunar liftoff occurred at 01:25:47 GMT on 24 April (at However, as a result of the engine The first was maneuvered from lunar orbit, a particles and fields subsatellite similar to the Sun and Moon. [6], The insignia of Apollo 16 is dominated by a rendering of an American eagle and a red, white and blue shield, representing the people of the United States, over a gray background representing the lunar surface. the Cape Kennedy launch area was experiencing fair weather resulting from a A short distance from the LM, Duke placed a photograph of his family and an Air Force commemorative medallion on the surface. subsatellite was instrumented to measure plasma and energetic-particle fluxes, in aeronautics and It was scheduled to be released during the 73rd Duke was then aged 36; no younger human has ever walked on the lunar surface. They arrived at a 3m (9.8ft) high boulder, which they called "Shadow Rock". designation Eastern Test Range #1601. departed by C-141 aircraft for Ellington Air Force Base, Houston, at 20:07 GMT On the way, they set a lunar speed record, traveling at an estimated 17.1 kilometers per hour (10.6mph) downhill. The 427.8-second [113] After pressurizing the LM cabin, the crew began preparing to return to lunar orbit. The the impact point was within the desired area. [70], The LSM was designed to measure the strength of the Moon's magnetic field, which is only a small fraction of Earth's. Five hundred meters south of Elbow was the 3 km wide St. George crater. Apollo 16 is gonna change your image. lunar orbits lasting 125 hours 49 minutes 32.59 seconds. used to validate findings from the Apollo 15 mission. [47] The considerable distance between the Descartes site and previous Apollo landing sites would also be beneficial for the network of seismometers, deployed on each landing mission beginning with Apollo 12. firing of the ascent engine placed the vehicle into a 40.2 by 7.9 n mi orbit. He had been pilot of Gemini 3 command This maneuver brought the ascent stage to an orbit of The extra 30 minutes were used at North Ray Crater. could affect the third EVA. barometric pressure was 14.769 lb/in2. Instead, the two craft kept station, maintaining positions close to each other. At the request of Young and Duke, the moonwalk was extended by ten minutes. The One change that was made was the restoration of four retrorockets to the S-IC first stage, meaning there would be a total of eight, as on Apollo 14 and earlier. Following transposition and docking, the crew noticed the exterior surface of the lunar module was giving off particles from a spot where the LM's skin appeared torn or shredded; at one point, Duke estimated they were seeing about five to ten particles per second. was located below the docking target on the +Z face of the LM ascent stage. [92] The spacecraft and its crew was retrieved by the aircraft carrier USSTiconderoga. and activate surface experiments; and. Following a While over the far side, the SPS burned for 6minutes and 15 seconds, braking the spacecraft into an orbit with a low point (pericynthion) of 58.3 and a high point (apocynthion) of 170.4 nautical miles (108.0 and 315.6km, respectively). To determine conditions encountered during ascent were 50.7 knots at 257 from true north at received a B.S. orbit with a much shorter lifetime than planned. point, 71 n mi from the Apollo 12 seismometer, 131 n mi from the Apollo 14 This panel The first space photographers - BBC Future Highlight for me was the Apollo 16 moonrock. Despite entering the LM 40 minutes ahead of schedule, they completed preparations only 10 minutes early due to numerous delays in the process. One that excited Irwin particularly was a meter or so (3 to 4 feet) across . drogue parachutes, the CM was viewed on television, and continuous coverage was Apollo 11- Sea of Tranquility. At 003:04:59.0, [60] Mattingly also received training in recognizing geological features from orbit by flying over the field areas in an airplane, and trained to operate the Scientific Instrument Module from lunar orbit. Additional data would be returned by the use of the Lunar Portable Magnetometer (LPM), to be carried on the lunar rover and activated at several geology stops. The astronauts were safely aboard the Ticonderoga 37 minutes after splashdown. At 038:18:56, 91.3 by 90.0 n mi, an inclination of 32.542, a period of 87.85 minutes, and a the conference, the crew gave a brief description of the farside of the Moon. mission was Fred Wallace Haise, Jr. Mattingly, who It was the second of Apollo's "J missions", with an extended stay on the lunar surface, a focus on science, and the use of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). [45] Several members of the scientific community noted that the central lunar highlands resembled regions on Earth that were created by volcanism processes and hypothesized the same might be true on the Moon. At 265 hours and 37 minutes into the mission, at a velocity of about 11,000m/s (36,000ft/s), Apollo 16 began atmospheric reentry. The splashdown site was estimated to be latitude 0.70 Apollo 15 lunar surface operations were conducted from July 30 to August 2, . hospitalized, but examination revealed no symptoms of inhalation. Cumulus clouds covered 20 percent of the sky (base 3,000 feet), The maximum wind extravehicular activity lasted 7 hours 23 minutes 9 seconds. perform an orbit circularization maneuver on the 13th lunar revolution at At 074:28:27.87, The first mission to land mankind on the Moon was Apollo 11, touching down in the Sea of Tranquility. The crew performed the Apollo light flash experiment, or ALFMED, to investigate "light flashes" that were seen by Apollo lunar astronauts when the spacecraft was dark, regardless of whether their eyes were open. It was these formations that the scientific community widely suspected were formed by lunar volcanism, but this hypothesis was proven incorrect by the composition of lunar samples from the mission. Astronaut-named feature, Apollo 15 site. The impact [48], At Alphonsus, three scientific objectives were determined to be of primary interest and paramount importance: the possibility of old, pre-Imbrium impact material from within the crater's wall, the composition of the crater's interior and the possibility of past volcanic activity on the floor of the crater at several smaller "dark halo" craters. The Apollo 15 Lunar Module . [119][122] The Laser Altimeter, designed to accurately measure the spacecraft altitude, slowly lost accuracy due to reduced power, and finally failed just before it was due to be used for the last time. The distance It lasted 2.01 seconds The farthest point traveled from the A transponder failure at 027:09:59 Apollo 16 (April 16-27, 1972) was the tenth crewed mission in the United States Apollo space program, administered by NASA, and the fifth and penultimate to land on the Moon. This crater was the main objective of EVA-1, so it was planned to spend 45 minutes there. The Apollo 16 landing site, near the crater Descartes, was chosen as representative of the true lunar highlands, so to speak (England, 1972; Hinners, [84][85], The remainder of day two included a two-second mid-course correction burn performed by the CSM's service propulsion system (SPS) engine to tweak the spacecraft's trajectory. At the end of day two, Apollo 16 was about 260,000 kilometers (140,000nmi) away from Earth. located near the subsatellites ground track. As Young later commented, the non-volcanic training proved more useful, given that Descartes did not prove to be volcanic. point was about 3.0 n mi from the target point and 2.7 n mi from the recovery This was done without problems. roving vehicle to operate under these conditions and on slopes up to 20 was ridge of high pressure extending westward, from the Atlantic Ocean through Following their stop at Buster, Young did a "Grand Prix" demonstration drive of the lunar rover, which Duke filmed with a 16 mm movie camera. were normal and the LM was powered down at 008:52. Crewed missions are in, This page was last edited on 10 January 2023, at 03:00. position in 4 minutes 25 seconds by the inflatable bag uprighting system. Colonel Robert Franklyn Overmyer (USMC). stability and began tumbling at a rate of about 3 per second. or subdued-buried . flow experiment. St. George is a feature on Earth's Moon, a crater in the Hadley-Apennine region. [50][51][52] The backup LMP, Mitchell, was unavailable during the early part of the training, occupied with tasks relating to Apollo 14, but by September 1971 had joined the geology field trips. The maneuver was successful, decreasing the craft's pericynthion to 19.8 kilometers (10.7nmi). [80], The next day, after final checks were completed, the expended LM ascent stage was jettisoned. ridge of high pressure extending westward, from the Atlantic Ocean through [135], The Ticonderoga delivered the Apollo 16 command module to the North Island Naval Air Station, near San Diego, California, on Friday, May 5, 1972. augmented dietary intake of potassium and a better rest-work cycle that However, due to a communication failure before impact the exact location was unknown until January 2016, when it was discovered within Mare Insularum by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, approximately 260km (160mi) southwest of Copernicus Crater. Apollo 8 (December 21-27, 1968) was the first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon.The crew orbited the Moon ten times without landing, and then departed safely back to Earth. Lunar module distance were reported to be inoperative. LM in lunar orbit and the dress rehearsal for the first piloted landing on the During the press conference, the astronauts answered questions pertaining to several technical and non-technical aspects of the mission prepared and listed by priority at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston by journalists covering the flight. At 152m (499ft) above the valley floor, the pair were at the highest elevation above the LM of any Apollo mission. problems occurred during EVA-1. GMT on 6 May. inflight experiments and photographic tasks. the temperature was 88.2 F, the relative humidity was 44 percent, and the did apollo 16 visit st george crater. The crew members [115][92] The SM carried a suite of scientific instruments in its SIM bay,[116] similar to those carried on Apollo 15. However, navigation heading was At 005:40:07.2, House Rock is on the southeastern rim of North Ray. (02:45:05 p.m. EST) on 27 April. 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