APOLLO 16: "NOTHING SO HIDDEN..." (1972, HD source) - NASA documentary

Video from the channel Retro Space HD about Apollo 16, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 28:24. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

NASA documentary about Apollo 16 that follows the mission from the crew's breakfast, on Sunday 16 April 1972, to splashdown. John Young, commander and veteran of three spaceflights, and Charles Duke explored the Descartes plateau while Ken Mattingly carried out experiments in orbit from the command module. The title alludes to a line from René Descartes that geologist Farouk El-Baz wrote on a blackboard during the mission: nothing is so far away that it cannot be reached, nor so hidden that it cannot be discovered.

It was the fifth crewed Moon landing. Before launch, the Marshall Center team studied a problem in a launch vehicle gyroscope that threatened to cancel the mission, and ultimately gave the go-ahead. After a journey with no serious incidents, the spacecraft entered lunar orbit on 19 April and the lunar module separated on the 20th. While preparing the circularization burn, Mattingly detected oscillations in the backup control system of the main engine and, per flight rules, it was not fired. The documentary shows the work at mission control and with teams from MIT and North American: isolating the fault, simulating it and assessing it. Tests indicated the oscillations would not cause damage and, after about six hours' delay, flight director Christopher C. Kraft gave the green light for a new attempt on revolution 16.

Young set foot on the Descartes formation on 21 April at 11:58 a.m. Eastern time. On the first excursion an ultraviolet camera was set up, the first astronomical observation made from the Moon, and the heat flow experiment broke and was never repaired. Young measured the strongest magnetic field found on the Moon with a portable magnetometer. The first traverse reached 1 km to the west; the second climbed Stone Mountain, just over 4 km to the south, with six stops, and the third reached the North Ray crater, about 5 km to the north, the largest sampled by astronauts. The Rover lost part of a rear fender. On 25 April, Mattingly went outside at about 173,000 miles from Earth to retrieve the film from the orbital cameras, and on the 27th the spacecraft re-entered and splashed down near the carrier Ticonderoga.