45 years ago today, on April 16th, 1972, Apollo 16, the penultimate mission of the Apollo Lunar Program, launched, carrying John Young, Ken Mattingly, and Charles Duke on a mission to land at Descartes Highlands and learn more about the geology of the lunar highlands, a part of the Moons lithograph that had not been sampled by any previous missions.
Apollo 16 in some ways is probably my favorite mission, but for reasons I just can’t figure out – something about it though just feels “right” in an odd way. 16 was commanded by one of my favorite astronauts, John Young, veteran of Gemini 3, Gemini 10, and Apollo 10 before this flight. The Lunar Module Pilot was Charlie Duke, a man who’s only spaceflight was Apollo 16. He had served as Capcom (capsule communicator) for the Apollo 11 lunar landing 3 years beforehand. Lastly, Ken Mattingly was the Command Module Pilot who was famously removed from the crew of Apollo 13 just days before launch due to his exposure to the measles. 2 years later, he would get his chance to fly on Apollo 16.
The mission was otherwise pretty straightforward, a somewhat similar mission to Apollo 15. It had the lunar rover, and was on the surface for 3 days. As I said, it was a somewhat typical mission (for what a mission to explore the moon could be), exploring several landmarks near the landing site and much like Apollo 15 releasing a sub-satellite into Lunar orbit. The crew would return to the Earth on April 27th, 11 days after launch.
I could go on about details of the mission, but of course, the focus of this article is the launch, and launch we will have. Today I’ll provide not one but two launch videos, one from CBS and one from NBC. As always, enjoy!
CBS Launch Video
NBC Launch Video