A family photograph discovered on the moon’s surface has been there for more than 40 years.
Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke put the picture in a plastic folder and dropped it on the surface when he travelled there in 1972.
The photo, which features him, his wife Dottie and two sons, Charles and Tom, was apparently intended for intelligent life forms that would potentially come across it.
On the back of the photograph, he wrote: “This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth. Landed on the Moon, April 1972.”
The snap was revealed when Mr Duke’s own photo of it was discovered at the Project Apollo Image Archive in America.
Robert Jacobs, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for communications, said: ‘A lot of astronauts left some sort of personal memento.
‘This one is a moment of humanity and what is important, for Charlie it was his family.’
Mr Duke is now 77 but was 36 when he made his journey to the moon.
