Charles Duke
From CAPCOM to moonwalker, Duke was a pivotal figure in the Apollo program
Charles M. Duke Jr is a former NASA astronaut who explored the Moon during Apollo 16, but he is also known for his crucial role as CAPCOM – the spacecraft communicator – during the hairraising landing of Apollo 11.
Duke entered the Air Force in 1957 after completing his training at the Naval Academy. His first assignment after advanced training was three years as a fighter-interceptor pilot with a squadron in Ramstein Air Base, Germany. When he was selected as an astronaut in 1966, Duke was an instructor at the Air Force’s Aerospace Research Pilot School – a place he had graduated from just the year before.
Working at NASA, he was a member of the astronaut support crew for the Apollo 10 flight, and was then assigned as CAPCOM for Apollo 11, the first landing on the Moon. According to Duke, it was Neil Armstrong himself – the first man on the Moon – who requested Duke’s presence on the radio. Apollo 11 had a dramatic landing. The crew was several miles off course, battling computer overload alarms and also running low on fuel. The Lunar Module touched down on the surface with less than 30 seconds of fuel remaining in the tanks.
“Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed,” Armstrong radioed on 20 July
1969. In Duke’s excitement, he fumbled the communications back. “I was so excited, I couldn’t get out Tranquillity Base. It came out sort of like ‘Twangquillity’, you know,” Duke said in an interview with NASA in 1999.
Duke was subsequently a backup member of the Apollo 13 crew, where he is most famous for accidentally exposing prime crew member Ken Mattingly to German measles. Duke had been exposed by his three-year-old son. Duke, who had never had the condition before and became ill himself, went to the NASA flight surgeon.
The doctor began testing all the astronauts, discovering that Mattingly had no immunity either. Mattingly was pulled from the Apollo 13 flight just days before launch.
The two men were selected as prime crew members for Apollo 16, along with John Young as commander. They lifted off on 16 April 1972, reaching lunar orbit on 19 April. Shortly after the Lunar Module Orion separated from the Command Module Casper, Mattingly discovered that the Command Module’s propulsion system engine would vibrate unusually when he used backup system controls. Mission Control took hours to make a decision, but came back saying the data showed it was safe to make a landing. Young and Duke gleefully touched down on the surface to begin exploration. At the age of 36, Duke was the youngest person to set foot on the lunar surface. Duke and Young spent more than 20 hours in the Descartes Highlands, spread out over three moonwalks. The crew’s primary goal was to seek out volcanic rocks, and they had received countless hours of geology training to assist them in that objective. They only found sedimentary rocks, however.
The mission went smoothly, with a few small snags: one astronaut broke a cover on the lunar rover’s wheel, which meant every drive covered the astronauts with lunar regolith.
Young also accidentally pulled a vital cable from a science experiment because it was hard for the astronauts to see their feet as they walked around. On his last day on the Moon, Duke placed a picture of his family on the surface. The photo includes Duke, his wife Dorothy and their sons Charles and Thomas.
Duke, Young and Mattingly splashed down safely on 27 April 1972. Duke remained with the program for three more years before retiring and undertaking several private initiatives. His work after NASA has spanned the fields of investment, real estate and even beverage distribution. He is a popular motivational speaker and is currently on the board of directors for the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.