Apollo Astronaut Charlie Duke

When the famous words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” traveled the radio waves back to Earth, the man to hear them in his headset was Apollo 11 CAPCOM Charlie Duke. Three years later, Duke himself was one of the youngest people ever to walk on the moon as Lunar Module Commander of the Apollo 16 mission. He went on to serve five Apollo missions in various capacities, but there’s so much more to his story than his career with NASA. Charlie now travels the world, relaying his adventures to awestruck audiences. Despite being in high demand on the global speaking circuit, Charlie didn’t have a website—and that was a mission we had to take on.

To bring Charlie Duke’s legendary life story online, the Lat Long team collaborated with the team at Chaco. We wanted to create a digital time capsule; an accessible firsthand account of Charlie’s adventures for current fans and space enthusiasts, and also for future generations.

We combed through NASA archives, unearthing rarely seen imagery from some of the most famous events in human history. With these images, we pieced together interactive segments to illustrate scenes from Charlie’s past while he recorded his thoughts over each segment. His voiceover narration captures his own behind-the-scenes account of what it was like to be in that moment. The entire site is a truly immersive personal tour of Charlie’s experiences during the Apollo project and an epic celebration of bold human achievement.