Science: Adventure at Descartes

"Well, Orion is finally here, Houston. Fahn-taah-stick!"

As Charles Duke's jubilant Southern drawl crackled across 240,000 miles of space last week, all the world breathed a sigh of relief. After a nerve-racking delay of nearly six hours, during which NASA officials came close to calling off Apollo 16's lunar landing, Astronauts Duke and John Young had brought the landing craft Orion to a nearly perfect touchdown only 200 yards off target in the moon's mountain-ringed Descartes region. It was man's fifth successful landing on the lunar surface, and the first in the highlands, the...

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