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Apollo 16 Mission Summary |
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Apollo 16 The Apollo Program |
The successful
Apollo 16 manned lunar landing mission was the second in a series of three
science-oriented J series missions planned for the Apollo program. The major
objective of the mission was to investigate the
lunar surface in the Descartes highlands area
because it was considered to be representative of much of the Moon's surface,
and an area of this type had not been previously visited.
The lunar module (LM) landed approximately 276 meters northwest of the planned landing site at about 104.5 hours ground elapsed time (GET). About 100 seconds of hover time remained at touchdown.
The second and third EVA's were devoted primarily to geological exploration and sample gathering in selected areas in the vicinity of the landing site. On the second EVA, the astronauts traveled south-southeast to a sampling area near Cinco Crater on Stone Mountain. The crew also made stops near Stubby and Wreck Craters, The duration of the second EVA was approximately 7 hours 23 minutes and a distance of 11.1 kilometers traveled.
Total lunar surface activities lasted 20 hours 14 minutes and 95 kilograms of samples were collected. These rocks represented samples of the ancient lunar highlands. The total distance traveled in the LRV was 26.7 kilometers and the crew remained on the lunar surface 71 hours.
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