Astronomy Picture Of The Day: The Moon still keeps their secret!!!

 

#NASA, #Space, #astronomy, #διάστημα

Black Hole

@konstructivizm

April 27, 1972 – the last moonwalk of Apollo 16.John Young and Charlie Duke stepped out for their third and final EVA, already looking like living statues sculpted from moondust. After more than twenty hours on the surface (a new record), every fold of their suits was packed with clinging, charcoal-gray powder that glittered like crushed diamonds in the harsh sunlight.They pushed the lunar rover harder than it had ever been driven, tearing across the Descartes Highlands at a blistering 11 mph, covering more than 16 miles (26 km) in total. The little electric buggy left rooster-tails of dust that hung in the vacuum for long, eerie seconds before drifting back http://down.At the end of the traverse, on the rim of North Ray Crater, Charlie Duke paused. From a pocket he pulled a small plastic-sleeved photograph (his wife Dotty and their two boys, Charles and Tom, smiling on a windy day in Houston). Without ceremony, he knelt and pressed it gently into the regolith, right there on a treeless, airless world 240,000 miles from home.Then he stood, gave the picture one last look, and climbed back into the rover. The photo is still there today, perfectly preserved in the lunar vacuum, slowly turning sun-bleached on one side while the family smiles forever into the black sky above.John fired up the rover one last time. Dust exploded behind them as they raced back to the lunar module Orion, two exhausted explorers leaving footprints and a tiny piece of Earth behind on a silent plain that will outlast us all.Mission complete. The Moon still keeps their secret.