
On January thirty first, 1971, Apollo 14 lifted off to begin their nine-day mission to the moon. Apollo 14 was the eighth manned mission of the Apollo program and the third to land on the moon. It was additionally the final of the H-missions in this system. The H-missions concerned a precision touchdown and as much as two-days being spent on the moon with two moonwalks on the lunar floor.
Apollo 14’s Mission
Whereas on the moon, Shepard and Mitchell have been to meet the key mission targets that Apollo 13 was unable to do on the Fra Mauro formation. These targets have been to survey and accumulate samples from the Imbrium Basin, deploy and activate the Apollo Lunar Floor Experiments Package deal (ALSEP), and take pictures of future attainable exploration websites.
Nevertheless, as a result of final mission being unable to land on the moon modifications have been made so {that a} bigger quantity of lunar materials and scientific knowledge could possibly be collected. This was made attainable by the addition of the modular gear transporter (MET). The MET was a collapsible two-wheeled cart, that would carry numerous instruments and transport collected samples from the moon’s floor.
This mission was necessary given the accident and emergency return of the manned crew of Apollo 13 in April 1970, which was initially speculated to be the third mission to landed on the moon. Fortunately, Apollo 14 bumped into no such issues. Whereas astronauts Alan Shepard Jr. (1923-1998) and Edgar D. Mitchell (1930-2016) landed on the Moon on February 5, Stuart A. Roosa (1933-94) stayed in lunar orbit on the command module performing scientific experiments and taking pictures to doc the moon.
The First Lunar Olympics
Throughout their time on the lunar floor Shepard and Mitchell carried out two extravehicular actions (EVAs) for a mixed complete of simply over 9 hours. It was throughout this time that Shepard famously performed golf on the moon, as he had introduced alongside the golf membership head of a six iron membership, which he hooked up to the deal with of one of many lunar excavation instruments.
Utilizing two golf balls he took three one-handed swings, lacking the ball on his first try. He then made contact on his subsequent two swings, with him declaring that his second ball hit traveled miles and miles and miles. In the meantime, Mitchell took a lunar scoop deal with and threw it prefer it was a javelin. In a 2011 interview with ABC to debate the fortieth anniversary of the occasion, Mitchell stated that his javelin throw went additional “by about 4 inches” then Shepard’s golf shot.
The duo would depart the moon’s floor on February sixth and three days later the astronauts arrived again on Earth when their command module landed within the South Pacific Ocean.
