A Conquista da Lua - Capítulo 14 - Apollo 14: Um longo caminho

Video from the channel Mensageiro Sideral about Apollo 14, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 7:36. Language: Portuguese. Video type: Documentary.

Chapter 14 of the series "A Conquista da Lua", dedicated to Apollo 14. It reviews the mission of Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell to the Fra Mauro formation, the destination Apollo 13 failed to reach, from the launch on 31 January 1971 to splashdown in the Pacific on 9 February.

After the Apollo 13 accident, lunar flights were halted for a few months. Shepard, who had flown the first American spaceflight, had been grounded since 1964 by an inner-ear problem and did not return to active service until he underwent surgery in 1969. Program management decided he needed more training, so he moved from Apollo 13 to Apollo 14. Meanwhile, NASA had cancelled Apollo 20 in January 1970 and later Apollo 18 and 19, reserving part of that hardware for Skylab. The author also includes what Mitchell told him in 2001: the fear that another failure would end support for the program.

Docking between the Kitty Hawk and the Antares took one hour and 42 minutes and was achieved on the sixth attempt. A false abort signal forced the lunar module's computer to be reprogrammed with commands dictated by radio, which Mitchell typed in by hand. The landing took place on 5 February. In two moonwalks, Shepard and Mitchell set up instruments, collected almost 45 kg of rocks, used a hand cart for the first time and covered 2.7 km on foot. They did not reach the rim of the 300 m wide Cone Crater, although they came very close. Shepard hit two golf balls. The moonwalks totalled 9 hours and 22 minutes, and the Antares spent 33 hours and 30 minutes at Fra Mauro.