What happened to the lander?

[moonglow]

Does anybody know what happened to Apollo 16's lander, it look's like it had a 13. I don't remember hearing about an accident on the Apollo 16 mission. Look's like pretty significant damage. I would think this would have been documented. On liftoff LM seemed normal looking so whatever happened occurred on the ascent. The Apollo 16 mission summary didn't mention anything and only said this:

Lunar ascent was initiated at 175 1/2 hours and was followed by a normal rendezvous and docking.

But in the picture it doesn't look normal at all, there was a blowout of some kind. I've seen the video of this shot, the caption said the LM is rotating so the CM can inspect for damage. I would think they would have noticed this and said yeah your rear end is blown out. But I can't find anything mentioned about this obvious damage. Shouldn't this have been documented? I find it strange if it isn't but I could have missed something. Is there any document's about this that you guy's are aware of?

[PeterB]

G'day Moonglow

The crumpled part of the LM's skin isn't that significant. The panels were there simply to cover up parts of the LM which had to be kept out of direct sunlight, nothing more. That part of the LM's surface wasn't part of the airtight skin of the LM; *that* was underneath what you can see in the picture.

Instead, to save weight, the panels covering the rear of the LM were incredibly thin, and secured using high-strength sticky tape. The reason they buckled was, I think, due to the acceleration of the LM during ascent from the Moon.

[JayUtah]

The panels covering the external aft equipment bay were extremely thin aluminum and were intended only for thermal protection: to shade the equipment underneath. They don't contain pressure. It looks like some of the fasteners on the bottom tore through their holes and left the panel to flap in the inertia. It will acquire that crumpled look just from manuevering.

[moonglow]

I see, I thought it looked like something blew out and wondered why it wasn't reported. Thank's for the reply's.

[Kiwi]

Videos or DVDs that include the TV transmission of the Apollo 16 lunar module liftoff show the bottoms of the panels getting blasted up by the exhaust from the ascent engine, part of which is deflected upwards by the descent stage. They stay up for a few seconds then come partly down again, probably due to the acceleration of the ascent stage.

Back in November I picked up a DVD which included a good-quality full version of the movie "Apollo 16: Nothing So Hidden...", along with two other documentaries, for only NZ$7.00. The liftoff is shown at 24 minutes 6 seconds.

[JayUtah]

That's a good example of how, in version 2 or 3 of the LM design, an engineer would have put tape across the bottom seams of the panels to help prevent that.