Charles Moss Duke Jr. is an American former astronaut, U.S. Air Force officer and test pilot. As lunar module pilot of Apollo 16 in 1972, he became the tenth remains) and youngest person to walk on the Moon. He has logged 4,147 hours’ flying time, of which 3,632 hours is in jet aircraft, and 265 hours in space.
About Charles Duke in brief
Charles Moss Duke Jr. is an American former astronaut, U.S. Air Force officer and test pilot. As lunar module pilot of Apollo 16 in 1972, he became the tenth remains) and youngest person to walk on the Moon, at age 36 years and 201 days. Duke was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 3, 1935, the son of Charles Moss Duke, an insurance salesman, and his wife Willie Catherine, née Waters. He was followed six minutes later by his identical twin brother William Waters Duke. His mother traced her ancestry back to Colonel Philemon Berry Waters, who fought in the American Revolutionary War. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the United States into World War II, his father volunteered to join the Navy, and was assigned to Naval Air Station North Island in California. In 1946, after the war ended, they settled in Lancaster, South Carolina, where his father sold insurance and his mother ran a dress shop. As a boy, Duke and his brother Bill were active in the Boy Scouts of America and earned its highest rank, Eagle Scout. Duke decided that he would like to pursue a military career, and went to see his local congressman, James P. Richards, give his nomination as a local boy, who said he would be pleased to give it to his son as a boy. He has logged 4,147 hours’ flying time, of which 3,632 hours is in jet aircraft, and 265 hours in space, including 21 hours and 38 minutes of EVA.
Duke retired from NASA on January 1, 1976, and entered the Air Force Reserve and served as a mobilization augmentee to the Commander, USAF Basic Military Training Center. He graduated from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1978, he was promoted to brigadier general in 1979, and retired in June 1986. He has chaired the board of directors of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, He was named Texan of the Year for 2020. A defect caused Bill to drop out of sports, and pursue a career in medicine, but was a golf model and golfer instead. He is married to his wife, Elizabeth, and they have a daughter, Elizabeth Elizabeth Duke, and a son, William William Duke Jr., who is also a golfer and has been a member of the Boy Scout and Boy Scout councils for more than 40 years. He also has a twin brother, William Waters Duke, who was a Boy Scout, as well as a sister, ElizabethElizabeth Duke, a Girl Scout and a Girl Guide Council member. He served three years as a fighter pilot with the 526th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Ramstein Air Base in West Germany. He stayed on as an instructor teaching control systems and flying in the F-101 Voodoo, F-104 Starfighter, and T-33 Shooting Star. His distinctive Southern drawl became familiar to audiences around the world, as the voice of a Mission Control made nervous by a long landing.
You want to know more about Charles Duke?
This page is based on the article Charles Duke published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
