Apollo 16, the fifth manned lunar landing mission, was launched on April 16, 1972, atop a Saturn V launch vehicle. The crew consisted of Commander John Young, Command Module Pilot Tom Mattingly, and Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke. "Casper" (Command and Service Modules 112) included a Service Module carrying numerous experiments and a subsatellite which was placed in lunar orbit. Young and Duke landed the Lunar Module "Orion" in the Descartes Highlands region of the moon. With the aid of the Lunar Rover, Young and Duke collected 96 kgs of samples of lunar material, which they returned to "Casper". On the return flight, Mattingly performed an EVA (extra vehicular activity) to retrieve film from a package in the Service Module. The mission ended successfully with a splashdown of the Command Module in the Pacific Ocean on April 27, 11 days after launch.

NASA transferred the Apollo 16 Command Module to the Smithsonian Institution in 1974.