Bach honours 'Moon Olympic' astronaut

Reuters - International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach presented Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke with a special 'Sky is the Limit' award on Wednesday (December 12) for being the first person to perform athletics on the Moon. Duke and his commander John Young, who died last year, did high jumps on the Moon's surface in what they dubbed 'The Lunar Olympics' during the Apollo 16 mission. In April 1972, 36-year-old former test pilot Duke became the tenth and youngest person to walk on the Moon's surface. Realising their mission coincided with the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, and with just a few minutes of surface time left, he and Young decided to honour the occasion with some low-gravity high jumps. Archive footage of the mission depicts the two astronauts performing their leaps, only to be surprised by the effect of the Moon's reduced gravity. Duke fell backwards during his leap, and was lucky not to rupture his suit.