George Town Primary School (GTPS) opened its doors yet again for another fun filled assembly.

Astronaut Charles Duke, of the Apollo 16 voyage, touched down at the school to talk to years 4-6 about his experience of walking on the moon and to show them video footage of the event.

Mr. Duke was a lunar module pilot for Apollo 16 in 1972; he became the tenth and youngest of only twelve people who have walked on the Moon.

Mr. Duke said, “I had fun on the moon but it was dangerous because, if the suit breaks then there’s no oxygen to breathe and you will be killed.”

The footage showed his landing and views of different experiments the crew carried out while on their mission.

“Here I was drilling a hole in the moon for an experiment, I had to go 10 feet down and drill 3 different holes.

Charles explained the landscape of the moon and what it was like to fall down.

“Unfortunately I fell down a couple of times and it’s hard to get back up. I had to push 3 times as hard to get back on my feet,” he said. “And there are rocks almost the size of this assembly room.”

There was also an instance on the moon when Charles made efforts to see how high he could jump. He fell backwards which is not something that he should have done with dangers of the suit breaking and potentially killing himself.

Mr. Duke told the children that the main lesson of this is “Never do something you are not supposed to do.”

The crew stayed on the moon for 72 hours on a mission that took a total of 11 days.

On their return to earth they jumped out of the space ship with a parachute and landed in the Pacific Ocean just south of Hawaii.

10-year-old Isaiah Reynolds said, “I can’t believe I got to meet a real astronaut that went on the moon!”

Ms. Marie Martin, Principal of GTPS said, “We are very excited that Mr. Charlie Duke was able to visit our students.

“They read about it but today they were able to experience the stories first hand. “This gives the children a memory to last a lifetime.”

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