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Born on this day
Kai Manne Börje Siegbahn
Kai Manne Börje Siegbahn (20 April 1918 – 20 July 2007) was a Swedish physicist.
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20 April 2024

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Apollo 16 land on the moon20.4.1972

Wikipedia (22 Mar 2013, 11:29)

Apollo 16, commanded by John Young, lands on the moon (21 April 1972 UT 02:23:35 - 20 April 09:23:35 p.m. EST).

Apollo 16 was the tenth manned mission in the United States Apollo space program, the fifth and penultimate to land on the Moon and the first to land in the lunar highlands. The second of the so-called J-missions, it was crewed by Commander John Young, Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke and Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly. Launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:54 PM EST on April 16, 1972, the mission lasted 11 days, 1 hour, and 51 minutes, and concluded at 2:45 PM EST on April 27.

John Young and Charles Duke spent 71 hours—just under three days—on the lunar surface, during which they conducted three extra-vehicular activities or moonwalks, totaling 20 hours and 14 minutes. The pair drove the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), the second produced and used on the Moon, 26.7 kilometres (16.6 mi). On the surface, Young and Duke collected 95.8 kilograms (211 lb) of lunar samples for return to Earth, while Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly orbited in the Command/Service Module above to perform observations. Mattingly spent 126 hours and 64 revolutions in lunar orbit. After Young and Duke rejoined Mattingly in lunar orbit, the crew released a sub-satellite from the Service Module. During the return trip to Earth, Mattingly performed a one-hour spacewalk to retrieve several film cassettes from the exterior of the Service Module.

Apollo 16's landing spot in the highlands was chosen to allow the astronauts to gather geologically older lunar material than the samples obtained in the first four landings, which were in or near lunar maria. Samples from the Descartes Formation and the Cayley Formation disproved a hypothesis that the formations were volcanic in origin.


The land on the moon

The crew continued preparing for Lunar Module (LM) activation and undocking shortly after waking up to begin flight day five. The boom that extended the mass spectrometer out from the Command/Service Module's Scientific Instruments Bay was stuck in a semi-deployed position. It was decided that Young and Duke would visually inspect the boom after undocking from the CSM in the LM. They entered the LM for activation and checkout of the spacecraft's systems. Despite entering the LM 40 minutes ahead of schedule, they completed preparations only 10 minutes early due to numerous delays in the process. With the preparations finished, they undocked in the LM Orion from Mattingly in the Command/Service Module Casper 96 hours, 13 minutes, 13 seconds into the mission. For the rest of the two crafts' passes over the near side of the Moon, Mattingly prepared to shift Casper to a circular orbit while Young and Duke prepared Orion for the descent to the lunar surface. At this point, during tests of the CSM's steerable rocket engine in preparation for the burn to modify the craft's orbit, a malfunction occurred in the engine's backup system. According to mission rules, Orion would have then re-docked with Casper, in case mission control decided to abort the landing and use the Lunar Module's engines for the return trip to Earth. After several hours of analysis, however, mission controllers determined that the malfunction could be worked around and Young and Duke could proceed with the landing. As a result of this, powered descent to the lunar surface began about six hours behind schedule. Because of the delay, Young and Duke began their descent to the surface at an altitude higher than that of any previous mission, at 20.1 kilometres (10.9 nmi). At an altitude of about 4,000 m (13,000 ft), Young was able to view the landing site in its entirety. Throttle-down of the LM's landing engine occurred on time and the spacecraft tilted forward to its landing orientation at an altitude of 2,200 m (7,200 ft). The LM landed 270 m (890 ft) north and 60 m (200 ft) west of the planned landing site at 104 hours, 29 minutes, and 35 seconds into the mission, at 2:23:35 UTC on April 21 (20 April 09:23:35 p.m. EST).

   
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