Apollo 11 as CMP, and Haise as LMP. Anders had flown with Lovell on Apollo 8. In early 1969, he accepted a job with the National Aeronautics and Space Council effective August 1969, and announced that he would retire as an astronaut at that time. Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup CMP in case Apollo 11 was delayed past its intended July launch date, at which point Anders would be unavailable. Lovell, Haise, and Mattingly were later assigned as the prime crew of Apollo 13. During Projects Mercury and Gemini, each mission had
Apollo 16 With the assistance of orbital photography obtained on the Apollo 14 mission, the Descartes site was determined to be safe enough for a manned landing. The specific landing site was between two young impact craters, North Ray and South Ray craters – in diameter, respectively – which provided "natural drill holes" which penetrated through the lunar regolith at the site, thus leaving exposed bedrock that could be sampled by the crew. After selecting the landing site for Apollo 16, sampling the Descartes and Cayley formations, two geologic units of the lunar highlands, was determined by mission planners to be the