page_title: Charles Duke
section_title: Return to Earth
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Duke / NASA / Apollo 16 / Return to Earth
caption_attribution_description: English: Charlie Duke's family portrait left on the surface of the moon. Cat Crater at Station 14 was named for sons Charles And Tom. Dot Crater at Station 16 was named for his wife.
context_page_description: Charles Moss Duke Jr. is an American former astronaut, U.S. Air Force officer and test pilot. As lunar module pilot of Apollo 16 in 1972, he became the tenth and youngest person to walk on the Moon, at age 36 years and 201 days.
  A 1957 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, he joined the USAF. He completed advanced flight training on the F-86 Sabre at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, where he was a distinguished graduate. After completion of this training, Duke served three years as a fighter pilot with the 526th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Ramstein Air Base in West Germany. After graduating from the Aerospace Research Pilot School in September 1965, he stayed on as an instructor teaching control systems and flying in the F-101 Voodoo, F-104 Starfighter, and T-33 Shooting Star.
  In April 1966, Duke was one of nineteen men selected for NASA's fifth group of astronauts. In 1969, he was a member of the astronaut support crew for Apollo 10. He served as CAPCOM for Apollo 11, the first crewed landing on the Moon.
context_section_description: On the way back to Earth, Duke assisted in a deep-space EVA that lasted 1 hour and 23 minutes, when Mattingly climbed out of the Casper spacecraft and retrieved film cassettes from the service module. After a journey during which Casper had traveled 2,238,598 kilometers (1,208,746 nmi), the Apollo 16 mission concluded with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at 19:45:05 UTC on April 27, and recovery by the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga.
  Duke left two items on the Moon, both of which he photographed. The most famous is a plastic-encased photo portrait of his family taken by NASA photographer Ludy Benjamin. The reverse of the photo was signed and thumb printed by Duke's family and bore this message: "This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth, who landed on the Moon on the twentieth of April 1972."
  The other item was a commemorative medal issued by the Air Force, which was celebrating its 25th anniversary in 1972. Duke was the only Air Force officer to visit the Moon that year. With the approval of the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, General John D. Ryan, and the Secretary of the Air Force, Robert Seamans, Duke took two silver medallions commemorating the anniversary. He left one on the Moon and donated the other to the Air Force. Today it is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, along with a Moon rock from the Apollo 16 mission.
  In the wake of the Apollo 15 postal covers scandal, Slayton replaced the Apollo 15 crew as the backup for the  Apollo 17 mission with the Apollo 16 one. Duke became the backup LMP, Young the backup commander, and Roosa the backup CMP. They went into training again in June 1972, just two months after Duke and Young had returned from the Moon. There was only a slim chance that they would be called upon to fly the mission, and in the event were not. Duke never flew in space again. He retired from NASA on January 1, 1976. He had spent 265 hours and 51 minutes in space.
caption: Family picture Duke left on the Moon
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