After having the information needed to burn the SPS to send them home radioed from Mission Control, Apollo 15 disappeared behind the Moon for the last time. Igniting on time, the SPS burned for 2 minutes, 21 seconds, adding 3,050 ft/s (930 m/s) to their speed.
Apollo 15 was launched on July 26, 1971, and successfully completed the fourth human landing on the Moon. It was the first of the “J series” of Apollo missions, which featured longer stays on the surface and in lunar orbit and more extensive science operations than was possible on the earlier Apollo missions.
The Apollo 13 mission was to be the third lunar landing in the program before an on board explosion forced the mission to circle the Moon without landing. This is the insignia of the Apollo 13 lunar landing mission.
At approximately 4:46 p.m. EDT Aug. 7, Apollo 15 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, about 335 miles north of Honolulu, ending a flight of 12 days, seven hours.
The Apollo 15 Hammer-Feather Drop
Because they were essentially in a vacuum, there was no air resistance and the feather fell at the same rate as the hammer, as Galileo had concluded hundreds of years before - all objects released together fall at the same rate regardless of mass.
Apollo 15 was an October 1971 lunar mission by NASA to scout for a permanent Moon base and possibly find water ice in lunar craters. It consisted of mission commander Ed Baldwin, CSM pilot Frank Sedgewick, and new female astronaut and LEM pilot Molly Cobb, who became the first american woman on the Moon.
Overall crew safety was estimated at 99.9 percent. But a 1965 assessment of these risks had found that, based upon the current plans and technology, the probability of mission success for each flight was only around 73 percent, while rated per-mission crew safety sat at 96 percent.
The command module of Apollo 13 entered Earth's atmosphere and splashed down on target on April 17 at 1:07 PM Eastern Standard Time. The mission has been referred to as a successful failure, in that all the crew members survived a catastrophic accident.
Apollo 15 was the LRV's debut mission, with new LRVs used on the last two crewed missions to the Moon, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. Scott and Irwin covered a total of 17.3 miles/27.8 kilometers over the course of three days and three EVAs, clocking just over three hours of driving time.
7, 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts David R. Scott, Alfred M. Worden and James B. Irwin ended their successful 12-day Moon landing mission with a splashdown in their Command Module (CM) Endeavour in the Pacific Ocean.
The nation's Moon landing program suffered a shocking setback on Jan. 27, 1967, with the deaths of Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H.
Apollo 16 returned safely to Earth on April 27, 1972.
Although the historic Apollo 11 mission's three astronauts made it home safe, a once-classified anomaly almost killed them. The problem occurred during Apollo 11's return to Earth. It caused a discarded space module to nearly crash into the crew's capsule.
Travelling at speeds up to 6 to 8 mph (10 to 12 km/h), it meant that for the first time the astronauts could travel far afield from their lander and still have enough time to do some scientific experiments. The Apollo 15 rover bore a plaque, reading: "Man's First Wheels on the Moon, Delivered by Falcon, July 30, 1971".
Apollo 17, U.S. crewed spaceflight to the Moon, launched on December 7, 1972, and successfully concluded on December 19, 1972. It was the final flight of the Apollo program, and Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt were the last humans to walk on the Moon.
The launch puzzled NASA and surprised the Apollo 11 crew, who only knew about its existence en route to the moon and “did not know about Luna 15 or its goal,” Armstrong said in 2009. No one exactly knew where it was going or how it could interfere with the three Americans heading for the same place.
The mission never flew; a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 on January 27 killed all three crew members—Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee—and destroyed the command module (CM).
Spacecraft and Subsystems
Apollo 15 was the first of the Apollo J-series spacecraft. The CSM mass of 30,371 kg was the launch mass including propellants and expendables, of this the Command Module (CM-112) had a mass of 5875 kg and the Service Module (SM-112) 24,496 kg.
On Jan. 27, 1967, a fire swept through the Apollo 1 Command Module during a launch rehearsal test, tragically killing the three astronauts trapped inside. Astronauts Gus Grissom (left), Ed White (middle), and Roger Chaffee (right), died on Jan.
These astronauts almost crashed into the moon. The Apollo 10 mission was the ultimate dress rehearsal for the moon landing. This mission was designed to mirror the Apollo 11 mission in almost every way but one; the actual moon landing.
Update: A typical Apollo blackout lasted about 4 minutes. Due to a shallower re-entry path, Apollo 13's blackout was calculated to last about 4.5 minutes. Flight director Gene Kranz's logs show that it took about 6 minutes to re-establish contact with Apollo 13.
On Feb. 9, 1971, the nine-day Apollo 14 Moon landing mission came to a successful conclusion with the splashdown of astronauts Alan B. Shepard, Stuart A.
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. On July 20, 1969, humans walked on another world for the first time in history, achieving the goal that President John F. Kennedy had set in 1961, before Americans had even orbited the Earth.
After the Apollo Moon missions in the 1970s, sending astronauts to Mars seemed the next logical step, but it would be a 'giant leap', politically and financially. Space is big: while it took the Apollo astronauts only four days to reach the Moon, with present technology it would take about nine months to reach Mars.