Apollo 16
The only Apollo landing in the central highlands, and a surprise about how they formed.
Key facts
- Agency
- NASA (United States)
- Type of mission
- Crewed landing and sample return
- Target
- The Moon: Descartes highlands
- Launched
- 16 April 1972
- Samples returned
- 95.7 kg of rock and soil
- Status
- Completed 1972
Apollo 16 was sent to the Descartes highlands because geologists, looking at photographs, thought the smooth plains and hills there were made by volcanoes. John Young and Charles Duke landed on 21 April 1972, spent three days exploring by rover and collected 95.7 kilograms of samples.
A lesson in impacts
Almost every rock they picked up was an impact breccia, not a lava. The highlands had been shaped by countless collisions that smashed, mixed and partly melted the crust. It was a lesson that photographs alone can mislead, and that the Moon's surface is above all a record of impacts.
The samples include anorthosites, the feldspar-rich rock of the early crust, and the largest single rock returned by Apollo, a breccia of 11.7 kilograms nicknamed Big Muley.
Why it matters to meteorites
The lunar highlands cover more than four-fifths of the Moon's surface, so most lunar meteorites are feldspar-rich highland breccias. Apollo 16 is the best Apollo match for them. Yet meteorites have also shown that the Apollo 16 site is not typical: many highland meteorites have less of the KREEP component than Apollo rocks, because the Apollo sites lie close to the unusual KREEP-rich region of the near side.
Key dates
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 16 April 1972 | Apollo 16 launched. |
| 21 April 1972 | Young and Duke landed in the Descartes highlands. |
| 27 April 1972 | The crew splashed down with 95.7 kg of samples. |
See where this mission fits among all the others in the mission timeline.
Did you know?
Big Muley, at 11.7 kg, is the largest single rock brought back from the Moon.
Charlie Duke left a family photograph on the lunar surface.