Designed as "an expeditionary force for a geologic assault
1" on the Moon’s
Hadley Rille,
Apollo 15 was a groundbreaking lunar mission. Designed to be devoted entirely to scientific exploration, it included a number of notable firsts: first to land outside of the
lunar mare;
first 3 day stay on the moon; first use of the
Lunar Rover by Commander David Scott and Lunar Module Pilot Jim Irwin; first use of the
Scientific Instrument Module, used by Command Module Pilot Al Worden to study the moon from lunar orbit; and first launch of a
subsatellite, used to map the plasma, particle and magnetic fields of the moon. On top of that, Scott gave
a visual proof of Galileo's theory of objects in gravity fields in a vacuum, showing gravity acts equally on all objects regardless of their mass. Scott and Irwin also discovered of the
Genesis Rock, a piece the moon's primordial crust, formed only 100 million years after the solar system itself.
The mission was a spectacular success, publicly called
"One of the most brilliant missions in space science ever flown". The crew was lauded and their future with NASA seemed assured.
Then the stamps hit the fan and Apollo 15 became the first US space crew that was ever fired.
[more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Dec 2, 2011 -
61 comments
Apollo 14, with
Alan Shepard,
American's first man in space, as the Commander,
Stuart Roosa,
Command Module Pilot and
Edgar Mitchell,
lunar module pilot,
splashed down forty years ago today. It was
flight of the rookies (total previous time in space was 15 minutes, all by Shepard).
There were several odd things about the flight, but no need to worry,
the moon trees are doing
just fine.
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Feb 10, 2011 -
11 comments
Thanks to
Yahoo's video search, I've spent the morning thrilling to movies from Nasa's earlier space programs.
Ed White
does the first american spacewalk,
the crew of apollo 8 sends out a christmas message (wonder how that would play these days),
Neil Armstrong goes for a walk,
Buzz Aldrin gives a science lesson,
John Young goes muddin',
Apollo 17 lifts off from the moon.
Galileo gets his due via Apollo 15,
as does Kubrick, via
Skylab.
all this makes
the Challenger explosion just incredibly sad.
Though I still don't know why
searching for apollo 8 turned up gay porn and I don't wanna know.
What is really interesting though, is watching
this Apollo 17 astronaut work on the moon. His body is moving in all sorts of subtle ways that highlight
how odd it must be to work in lower gravity.
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Jan 9, 2005 -
35 comments
