Clear photo of family has been left on moon for 50 years with a message for whoever finds it

If you're ever lucky enough to make it onto the surface of the Moon then you might try to find a family photo with a message on it left behind by one of your predecessors.

It was placed there by Charles Duke, who was part of the Apollo 16 mission and set foot on the Moon in 1972.

The youngest astronaut ever to walk on the Moon, Duke nearly got himself into serious trouble trying to set a record for the highest lunar jump.

He was able to make it two feet and eight inches off the ground but was unable to keep his balance when he landed and fell backwards onto his spacesuit's life support unit.

Had the fall damaged his suit it would have killed him, and his fellow astronaut commented: "That ain't very smart."

HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

When his time on the surface of the Moon was over Duke left two things behind, one was a commemorative air force medal and the other was a photo of his family.

The picture also had a message on it, left for anyone who would walk upon that particular patch of the Moon that might find the image and wonder what it meant.

It reads: "This is the family of astronaut Charlie Duke from planet Earth who landed on the moon on April 20, 1972."

However, after almost 52 years up there the sunlight the Moon is subjected to has most likely bleached the picture clear, and we don't know if Duke's message survived either.

The family photo isn't the only thing astronauts have left on the Moon in the various trips we've made up there.

NASA

There are of course a bunch of flags placed up there, as each landing was marked by planting a flag to continue the tradition started by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969.

Bleaching from the sunlight means that most of these flags are now likely to be completely white instead of bearing the stars and stripes.

There's also the ashes of US geologist Gene Shoemaker, which were placed into a capsule and taken to the Moon when he died.

Also cluttering up the surface of the Moon is a bunch of equipment we left behind up there, some golf balls from when Alan Shepard snuck a golf club head onto the Apollo 14 mission and somewhat disgustingly 96 bags of human waste.

Oddly enough scientists would quite like to study those bags to see what being on the Moon all these years has done.

Topics: Space, NASA

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

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