Apollo 16 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Florida on April 16, 1972. With a very experienced astronaut John Young who flew 3 missions before and rookies: Charles Duke and Thomas Mattingly II.
After a three day journey, Young and Duke climbed into the LM (Lunar Module) named Orion.
Orion touched down in The Descartes highlands region. Young went out of Orion first, Duke followed (Mattingly stayed in lunar orbit.)
Orion's landing was overdue, because of a thought problem with the lander’s engine that kept Young and Duke for 16 full orbits around the moon. Until mission control sorted out the problem. After landing the crew slept for a few hours and then got ready to go outside.
Work
After a few minutes of messing around on the moon, both astronauts started getting out the instruments made to study the moon.
Young set up a mini telescope and started looking at stars and planets. Meanwhile Duke carried the rest of the instruments in a fold out box and by mistake dropped the package onto the ground. Duke quickly grabbed the package to see if anything was damaged. It was full of dust, but nothing was broken. After that Young and Duke set up the instruments. After everything was set up Young and Duke went back to Orion for some rest. The astronauts slept for a few hours before waking up, and going outside again.
By then it was the second day so they decided to do some driving on the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) , a battery-powered four-wheeled car. The astronauts were searching for Basalt rocks, a common form of Lava to take back to Earth. Young and Duke found some great finds with meteorites. But no Basalts were found. Scientists were very puzzled by this, it looked from orbit that there would be plenty of Basalts. This place had not been formed by Lava, meteorites are what really formed it! The scientists were wrong.
Return
After nearly 71 hours on the moon, Young and Duke took off again and docked with Mattingly in orbit. Before they left the crew launched a small probe into orbit around the moon. The probe sent back data for over a month before crashing into the moon. The crew splashed down in the pacific ocean on April 27, 1972. The rocks and soil brought back from the moon were studied for nearly 20 years.
Apollo 17 flew just 8 months later as the last mission to the moon
But that is another story for another time…
Image Source: NASA.gov