Why Apollo 16 Was Almost Aborted 8 Miles From The Moon

Video from the channel Spark about Apollo 16, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 49:49. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary about the Apollo 16 mission told through interviews with its crew, John Young, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly, together with mission control and program staff, interspersed with mission footage and audio. It covers the training, the launch, the problem that nearly scrubbed the moon landing, the time on the surface and the return.

The story starts with Apollo 13: Duke, from the backup crew, caught measles and exposed the prime crew; Mattingly, who had never had it, was pulled two days before launch and replaced by Jack Swigert. After an oxygen tank exploded on April 13, 1970, Young, Duke and Mattingly worked from the ground on the rescue. Deke Slayton later assigned them Apollo 16, whose goal was to land in the Descartes highlands. Training included field geology in the western United States and in Hawaii, practice with the lunar rover (electric, with a motor in each wheel and steering on both axles) and hundreds of hours of simulator time for Mattingly.

After separation in lunar orbit, Mattingly detected violent oscillations while testing the backup guidance system for the command module's main engine. With the lunar module Orion about 8 miles from the landing site, the mission nearly aborted; a broken wire was found in the backup system and, after hours of waiting, the descent was cleared. On the surface, Young accidentally tore out the power cable of the heat flow experiment. The crew deployed the ultraviolet camera, drove the lunar rover to distant sites, found the large boulder nicknamed House Rock and collected more than 200 pounds of samples over three moonwalks. Duke left a photograph of his family on the surface. Mattingly ran experiments alone in orbit and, on the way home, made a 1-hour, 24-minute spacewalk to retrieve the film, during which Duke recovered the wedding ring Mattingly had lost. The crew was recovered by the Ticonderoga. The documentary closes with the three astronauts' later careers.