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During Apollo 16’s mission to the moon, Ken Mattingly lost his wedding ring, but Charles Duke found it during a spacewalk and returned it to him. Mattingly was later part of two space shuttle flights.
On the second day of an 11-day mission to the moon aboard Apollo 16, command module pilot Ken Mattingly lost his wedding ring. “It just flew off somewhere and none of us could find it,” said lunar module pilot Charles Duke. The three Apollo 16 astronauts searched the spacecraft thoroughly, with no luck. However, on day 9 of the mission, after Duke flew the lunar module to the Moon and back, Duke saw the ring exit the hatch during a spacewalk. Duke grabbed it but missed; he thought it was the last they would see of the ring. But he bounced off the back of Mattingly’s helmet instead, and started back toward Duke. This time the astronaut captured him and later reunited Mattingly with his wedding ring.
Lost and found in space:
Apollo 16 and the ring were flying through space at 3,000 feet per second (914m per second), but with no wind resistance, as Duke put it, things just “move together.”
Mattingly had been scheduled to be part of the Apollo 13 crew. He was replaced three days before launch when it was discovered he had been exposed to German measles.
Mattingly later commanded two space shuttle flights: Columbia’s last orbital test flight in 1982 and the first Department of Defense mission, launched in 1985.
