may: lunar module blastoff

It has been said that work of the Apollo engineers was like building a cathedral to the precision of a wristwatch. Certainly, no-one who has seen a Saturn V rocket first hand can fail to be awed by its scale. But equally remarkable is the fact that only the Command Module, the tiny cone on the very top of the massive vehicle, completed the entire round trip to the Moon and back. All of the other stages and sections were discarded when the fuel they carried was exhausted.

Here, the bottom part of Apollo 16's Lunar Module is left behind on the Moon (together with the robot camera that took the picture) as the astronauts return to the orbiting Command and Service Modules for the trip back to Earth.

Image: NASA.