New study of Apollo 16 moon samples reveals hidden lunar history

[Admin]

Soil-like pebbles in moon samples brought home by Apollo 16 astronauts have revealed new details about lunar history.

New study of Apollo 16 moon samples reveals hidden lunar history : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

"After landing in the heavily-cratered Descartes region in the lunar highlands, astronauts John Young, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly collected roughly 200 pounds (96 kg) of material from the moon's surface."

But, Mattingly did not land in the LEM, he stayed in lunar orbit. I thought everybody knew that the LEM only carried 2 astronauts.

 

[Moonwatcher]

Glad that some good data could be had from the Apollo 16 samples. It was disappointing that neither Descartes nor Caley were volcanic in origin, so all the geologists in the backroom were wrong. Young and Duke knew this as soon as they landed and looked at the rocks. From then on in many respects it was deemed a "wasted mission", but nevertheless, we have the samples for study.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I would not call it "wasted" - we learned that our theory was wrong, so we could then fix it.

Or at least move on to the next incorrect conclusion that needs to be discovered and corrected in order to make progress in our understanding.

 

[Moonwatcher]

I would not call it "wasted" - we learned that our theory was wrong, so we could then fix it.

Or at least move on to the next incorrect conclusion that needs to be discovered and corrected in order to make progress in our understanding.

Yes, even a "negative" provided information, but we knew the Apollo missions were capped at 17 due to the Congress and Nixon administration killing Apollo. Guess we ought to happy we still have some of the old hardware left to show naysayers who say we didn't go to the moon. Ugh. Still, given that we only had 16 and 17 left to fly, I wish they might have chosen another target. Apollo 16 was still an historic mission. One I remember well. Those were amazing times. They ended far too soon.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Out of curiosity, what other choices for landing sites would you have preferred for Apollo 16 and 17 missions? Were we capable of landing at the lunar south pole, then? Did we think there was water in craters at the south pole, then? Would we have risked landing on the far side with that technology and then-current knowledge?

 

[Moonwatcher]

It has been a few years, LOL, so I can't remember the other sites, (should be able to find them on a NASA website) but some of them I recall would have been very interesting to see and geologically significant. No, in those days no one suspected there was any water on the moon. Those findings came about much later (I think just about 10 years ago) due to unmanned orbiting probes by India and China and the U.S. We even crashed one vehicle intentionally so another orbiter could get data about the debris kicked up. Apollo didn't have enough delta-v most of the time to get into high (or low) latitudes on the moon. They were "stretching" it about as far as they could on 15 and 17. That's why the earlier missions mostly were in the equatorial regions. (But they were able to sample many things due to the ejecta from large craters and Mare Imbrium being flung far). Also, consider that 1960s Lunar Orbiters that helped them choose landing sites were also put into mostly equatorial orbits. Only sites well photographed and well vetted by those missions were considered for Apollo. The main focus of Apollo was to beat the Russians. Obtaining scientific knowledge was a secondary, but distant, concern to that main goal.