The Forgotten Story Of The Apollo 16 Moon Landing

Video from the channel Progress - Science Documentaries about Apollo 16, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 50:40. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary about Apollo 16, the fifth crewed mission to land on the Moon, commanded by John Young with Charles Duke and Thomas K. Mattingly. It combines testimonies from the astronauts, flight controllers and family members with footage and audio from the mission, and follows the 11-day flight from training through splashdown and the crew's later paths.

The story begins with Apollo 13: Mattingly was pulled from the crew two days before launch after being exposed to the measles that Duke contracted, and was replaced by Jack Swigert. After helping from the ground with that crew's return, Young, Duke and Mattingly were named the prime crew for Apollo 16. The goal was to land at Descartes, in the lunar highlands, collect rocks and set up the scientific experiment package. Training included field geology practice in the western United States and in Hawaii, rehearsals with the lunar rover, and about 2,000 hours in simulators and test facilities.

After separation of the lunar module Orion, a fault in the backup steering system of the command module's main engine raised fears the mission would be scrubbed. It was traced to a broken wire, and the descent was cleared hours later. On the surface, the crew deployed a far-ultraviolet camera/spectrograph, lost the heat-flow experiment when Young caught his foot in its cable, and drove across the terrain in the rover, which he says reached 11 miles per hour. A rock they thought was medium-sized turned out to be the size of a house and was named House Rock. Duke left a photograph of his family on the ground. Over about three days they carried out three EVAs and gathered more than 200 pounds of samples. Mattingly ran 15 experiments in orbit and, on the way home, performed a 1 hour 24 minute tethered EVA. During that spacewalk, Duke caught the wedding ring Mattingly had lost, which had floated out through the hatch. The documentary closes with Young's and Mattingly's later Space Shuttle flights and Duke's departure from NASA.