On this day in space: April 16, 1972: Apollo 16 Launches to the Moon

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On April 16, 1972, Apollo 16 launched to the moon! Apollo 16 was NASA's fifth lunar landing and the penultimate mission of the entire Apollo program.

On April 16, 1972, Apollo 16 launched to the moon! Apollo 16 was NASA's fifth lunar landing and the penultimate mission of the entire Apollo program.

The Apollo 16 crew: Thomas K. Mattingly II, command module pilot; John W. Young, commander; and Charles M. Duke Jr., lunar module pilot.

(Image credit: NASA)

After orbiting the moon for about a day, Young and Duke took the lunar module down to the surface while Ken Mattingly stayed behind in the command module.

They landed in the lunar highlands to look for volcanic rocks, but they didn't find any. They collected plenty of other moon rocks, though, and they brought more than 200 pounds back to Earth.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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