And their enthusiasm was a notable change from the indifference of some earlier astronauts. I loved to be outdoors. Eyes sparkling, he adds that his favorite field site was in Iceland due to its Moon-like appearance and isolation. He would give up much of his free time to get more of my instruction.
By the time he was ready to fly, he could rumble the name of features he would fly over during a given segment of the flight. And he showed his ability during the first orbit by conveying the names of the craters he was going over — stunning the guys at Mission Control. But if you are in Flagstaff, Arizona, visit the U. There you will find one of 10 custom-built Grovers — makeshift training vehicles the astronauts used to practice driving the real thing.
They trained with the Grover at multiple locales, including the volcanic cinder fields not far from Flagstaff. According to the USGS, the jury-rigged Grover was so cheap in part because technicians scavenged parts from old cars — the steering mechanism is from a Renault, the wheels from an Olds Tornado — and they even used landing gear from a B bomber. Scott and Irwin placed on the lunar surface a small figurine called Fallen Astronaut and a placard with the names of deceased astronauts.
For audiences back on Earth, Scott dropped a falcon feather and hammer. They landed on the surface at the same time, proving that Galileo was right about the acceleration of objects under gravity. I loaned it to a guy and never got it back. Scott is the only surviving member of the crew. Scott and Irwin saw a bit of light-colored material exposed on a rock and, as they examined it in more detail, they realized that it was almost pure anorthosite. This first sample of the primordial highlands helped confirm the magma ocean hypothesis proposed by Wood and others.
Apollo 15 points us to the future as well, says Kate Burgess, a geologist with the U. Naval Research Laboratory. While Apollo 15 may be 50 years in the past, its achievements and consequences continue to resonate. Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter. View our Privacy Policy. By signing up you may also receive reader surveys and occasional special offers. We do not sell, rent or trade our email lists.
Login or Register Customer Service. The LM landed approximately 12 minutes later with sufficient propellant remaining to provide an additional hover time of seconds, had it been required. During a lunar stay of 66 hr 54 min 53 sec, a min standup extravehicular activity EVA and three periods of surface EVA totaling approximately The astronauts were able to collect samples from the low dark plains maria , the Apennine highlands, and the area along Hadley Rille, a long, narrow winding valley.
Approximately 76 kg of lunar material including soil, rock, core-tube, and deep-core samples were returned to Earth. Two astronaunts in the LM landed on the lunar surface, while the CM pilot remained in lunar orbit in the command module. The lunar module was a two-stage vehicle designed for space operations near and on the Moon.
The lunar module stood 7 meters high and was 9. The ascent and descent stages of the LM operated as a unit until staging, when the ascent stage functioned as a single spacecraft for rendezvous and docking with the command module CM.
The on-orbit dry mass weight of the LM was kilograms. The lunar roving vehicle, used for the first time on Apollo 15, was a four-wheeled, manually controlled, electrically powered vehicle that carried the crew and their equipment over the lunar surface.
The increased mobility and ease of the travel made possible by this vehicle permitted the crew to travel much greater distances than on previous lunar landing missions. The vehicle was designed to carry the two crewmen and a science payload at a maximum velocity of about 16 kilomenters per hour 8. It could be operated from either crewman's positions, as the control and display console was located on the vehicle centerline. Scott and Irwin then drove to locations along the rille and at the base of the mountain scarp southwest of the landing site.
The basalts collected at the Apollo 15 landing site are chemically similar to those from Apollo 12 and formed about 3. The Heat Flow Experiment required drilling a deep core into the Moon, but this proved unexpectedly difficult and required time from the crew on all three EVAs to complete the necessary work.
On the second EVA, lasting 7 hours and 12 minutes, the crew drove south from the landing site onto Mount Hadley Delta, reaching an elevation of about meters above the plains where they landed. Although the rover handled the climb easily, the crew found it difficult to work on the steep slope. Nevertheless, this was a geologically very productive traverse. The crew collected two rocks that consist of a mixture of material that melted during the Imbrium basin impact and material that formed at least 20 km deep in the crust prior to the Imbrium impact.
On the third EVA, lasting 4 hours and 50 minutes, the crew first completed extraction of the deep core sample and then drove the rover to locations along Hadley Rille west of the landing site. Because of the time required to collect the core sample and the need to keep the scheduled lunar liftoff time, a planned stop at the North Complex, a possible volcanic structure, had to be cancelled.
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