Charlie Duke, one of the
astronauts on the Apollo 16
flight, dropped this photo
of his family, at their home
in Texas, on to the surface
on the Moon during one of
his excursions. The actual
photograph will have
faded, because of exposure
to harsh lunar conditions,
but this image of the event
is preserved in the
Nasa archives in Houston.
The space shuttle Discovery,
docked at the International
Space Station in 2005. Its
first flight was in 1984 and it
was operational for 27 years,
flying 238 million km. Notable
missions include carrying
the Hubble Space Telescope
into orbit, before its final trip
into space on February
24, 2011. Discovery is now
on display at Washington
Dulles International Airport.
Buzz Aldrin tests a gas
powered jet pack near a
Gemini capsule in the 1960s.
For astronauts, getting
into space is only part of
the challenge – moving
around and returning to the
spacecraft in a bulky suit
are added complications.
Inventions like the jet pack
would have helped, but it
didn’t receive a successful
test run until the 1980s.
Borne on three parachutes,
the Apollo 16 capsule
descends into the Pacific
Ocean in 1972. Apollo 16 was
the penultimate spacecraft
to reach the Moon; landing
in the lunar highlands – as
opposed to the lunar maria
sites of earlier missions –
it gave the astronauts the
opportunity to collect almost
100kg of geologically
older samples of material.
