How high did astronauts jump on the moon?

Lunar gravity is 1.62 m/s², a shade under a sixth of Earth's 9.80 m/s². In shirtsleeves that would translate directly: the same push from the legs that lifts you half a metre at home would carry you six times higher. Apollo crews never came close. Film from the surface shows hops of a few tens of centimetres, usually with a visible wobble on landing, and the best attempt on record stayed well below half a metre. The limit was not the Moon; it was everything the astronaut was wearing.

A pressurised suit resists every movement, and the joints that matter for a jump, ankles and knees and hips, were the stiffest of all. The life-support backpack put a substantial mass high on the back and shifted the centre of gravity rearwards, so a vigorous push tended to rotate the astronaut backwards rather than upwards. Landing badly risked the pressure garment and the backpack, and getting up from a fall in one sixth gravity was awkward and expensive in time and oxygen. Crews learned instead to lope, hop and shuffle, gaits chosen for stability rather than height.

Apollo 16 tried it deliberately. At the end of the last excursion John Young performed a jump salute for the camera, leaving the surface briefly with both feet; Charles Duke then attempted to go higher, lost his balance and came down on his backpack, the one piece of equipment keeping him alive. He got up unhurt, but the episode ended the improvised competition and is still cited whenever the question comes up. Nobody has yet jumped on the Moon without a suit designed, in effect, to stop them.