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On July 26th, 1971, at 9:34 EDT, Apollo 15 was launched from the Kennedy Space Center, taking astronauts David R. Scott, Alfred M. Worden, and James B. Irwin on a 12 day journey during which Scott and Irwin would land and spend 3 days exploring a spectacular valley between the Apennine Mountains and a meandering canyon called Hadley Rille.
The two men landed their lunar module, named Falcon for the mascot of their all-Air Force crew, close to their pre-planned target on July 30th. For the first time ever, a wheeled vehicle was introduced to another world. The Lunar Rover performed brilliantly and greatly extended the exploration range of a pair of astronauts over what they could achieve on foot.
In the course of 3 separate excursions, the men collected 170 pounds of lunar samples, including a core sample nearly 8 feet deep and a white piece of plagioclase rock that was determined to be a piece of the Moon's primordial crust. It was dubbed the Genesis Rock, and at 4.5 billion years old, it was perhaps only 100,000 years younger than the Earth and Moon themselves.
The two explorers also set up a complex of experiments that were powered by a small nuclear-powered generator and controlled remotely by scientists back on the Earth.
Courtesy of a new television camera and a relay via a high-gain antenna on the Lunar Rover, the activities of the astronauts as they roamed far afield from their landing site were broadcast live and in unprecedented clarity to viewers back on Earth.
While Scott and Irwin explored the lunar surface, Worden conducted his own mission of exploration from lunar orbit with an array of high-resolution cameras and experiments aboard the command service module, named Endeavor after James Cook's world-ranging vessel of scientific exploration from two centuries earlier.
Before leaving the Moon, Scott dropped a hammer and a feather in front of the TV camera in a demonstration of Galileo's famous gravity experiment.
After rejoining in lunar orbit, the crew spent an additional 48 hours continuing with experiments in lunar orbit, squeezing every available drop of new knowledge from the Moon given the limits of their oxygen and water supplies.
Just before firing the service module engine to break them out of lunar orbit and return to Earth, the crew launched a subsatellite that would stay behind in lunar orbit and continue conducting research for a year before running out of power and crashing into the Moon.
During the return journey, Worden conducted the first deep space EVA to retrieve the thousands of feet of film that he had shot while in lunar orbit.
On August 7th, 1971, Endeavor and its crew returned safely to Earth, although with a harder than usual landing because one of the main parachutes collapsed, possibly due to damage from a fuel dump.
Irwin, the mission's lunar module pilot, succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 61 on August 8th, 1991, the first of the 12 Apollo moonwalkers to die. Worden, the command module pilot, died of a stroke on March 18th, 2020 at the age of 88. Scott, the mission commander, is 89 years old and living in Los Angeles, the last surviving Apollo landing mission commander and as such the only remaining human who has landed a spacecraft on another world.
Air Force Lt. Colonel James B. Irwin salutes the US flag on the Moon, August 2, 1971.
The two men landed their lunar module, named Falcon for the mascot of their all-Air Force crew, close to their pre-planned target on July 30th. For the first time ever, a wheeled vehicle was introduced to another world. The Lunar Rover performed brilliantly and greatly extended the exploration range of a pair of astronauts over what they could achieve on foot.
In the course of 3 separate excursions, the men collected 170 pounds of lunar samples, including a core sample nearly 8 feet deep and a white piece of plagioclase rock that was determined to be a piece of the Moon's primordial crust. It was dubbed the Genesis Rock, and at 4.5 billion years old, it was perhaps only 100,000 years younger than the Earth and Moon themselves.
The two explorers also set up a complex of experiments that were powered by a small nuclear-powered generator and controlled remotely by scientists back on the Earth.
Courtesy of a new television camera and a relay via a high-gain antenna on the Lunar Rover, the activities of the astronauts as they roamed far afield from their landing site were broadcast live and in unprecedented clarity to viewers back on Earth.
While Scott and Irwin explored the lunar surface, Worden conducted his own mission of exploration from lunar orbit with an array of high-resolution cameras and experiments aboard the command service module, named Endeavor after James Cook's world-ranging vessel of scientific exploration from two centuries earlier.
Before leaving the Moon, Scott dropped a hammer and a feather in front of the TV camera in a demonstration of Galileo's famous gravity experiment.
After rejoining in lunar orbit, the crew spent an additional 48 hours continuing with experiments in lunar orbit, squeezing every available drop of new knowledge from the Moon given the limits of their oxygen and water supplies.
Just before firing the service module engine to break them out of lunar orbit and return to Earth, the crew launched a subsatellite that would stay behind in lunar orbit and continue conducting research for a year before running out of power and crashing into the Moon.
During the return journey, Worden conducted the first deep space EVA to retrieve the thousands of feet of film that he had shot while in lunar orbit.
On August 7th, 1971, Endeavor and its crew returned safely to Earth, although with a harder than usual landing because one of the main parachutes collapsed, possibly due to damage from a fuel dump.
Irwin, the mission's lunar module pilot, succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 61 on August 8th, 1991, the first of the 12 Apollo moonwalkers to die. Worden, the command module pilot, died of a stroke on March 18th, 2020 at the age of 88. Scott, the mission commander, is 89 years old and living in Los Angeles, the last surviving Apollo landing mission commander and as such the only remaining human who has landed a spacecraft on another world.
Air Force Lt. Colonel James B. Irwin salutes the US flag on the Moon, August 2, 1971.
