Crash site of Apollo 16’s rocket booster found on Moon

A MISSING disposable booster from the Apollo 16 mission to the Moon has been found — 43 years after it drifted out of sight and disappeared.

A MISSING disposable booster from the Apollo 16 mission to the Moon has been found — 43 years after it drifted out of sight and disappeared.

The Saturn V rocket’s third-stage booster was intended to be crashed into the Moon to prevent it from becoming a dangerous piece of space junk, and to see if an seismic disturbance from the impact could be detected.

But the 17.7m long assembly of liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen and engine parts didn’t quite follow its intended course.

Other Apollo 16 remains ... This annotated image released by NASA shows a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) view of the US flag at the Apollo 16 site on the Moon. Source: AFP/Arizona State University

NASA lost track of it during its decent.

It was not seen again. Until now.

John Hopkins University physicist Jeff Plescia was scouring high-resolution images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter when he spotted a fresh scar on the Moon’s surface.

The solving of this minor Moon-landings mystery was reported last Wednesday on theInside Outer Space blog.

Once were explorers ... Astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr., Lunar Module pilot of the Apollo 16 mission, is photographed collecting lunar samples during the Apollo 16 mission. Picture: NASA