Forty years ago today — April 16, 1972 — astronauts John W. Young, Jr., Thomas K. Mattingly, and Charles M. Duke, Jr., blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center atop a Saturn-V booster, on their way to the Moon.
(Lunar Module “Orion” and the Lunar Roving Vehicle, with astronaut John Young in the background. NASA image.)
Apollo-16 was the fifth mission to land on the Moon, and the second in which astronauts drove the Lunar Rover to explore a wide area around their landing site. Young and Duke spent almost three days on the lunar surface, and made three separate excursions from the Lunar Module out onto the Descartes Highlands.
And for bonus “aerospace” history, on this date 145 years ago Wilbur Wright was born in Millville, Indiana. I find it interesting how quickly we went from Wilbur and Orville’s first powered flight at Kitty Hawk to landing on the Moon — and I wonder when it will become important to us to push outward from there.
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