Apollo 14: ‘A Wild Place Up Here’

Video from the channel NASA about Apollo 14, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 5:11. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A short NASA piece that revisits the Apollo 14 mission, combining present-day commentary with audio recordings and footage from the mission itself: the docking with the lunar module, the landing, the surface exploration and the return to Earth.

The mission was prepared after Apollo 13, when, according to the video, nothing was taken for granted and the ground team had to reprogram software and fully understand what had happened. During the journey, docking with the lunar module failed again and again: it took six attempts and about two hours to achieve a firm latch. The video presents this as proof of confidence in training and of the teamwork between the crew and mission control.

The lunar module landed on a slope, but exactly at the planned spot. On the surface, the crew used the MET, a hand-pulled cart for carrying the experiments and bringing back the samples, which let them move farther from the module than any previous crew. The maps, made from aerial photographs, did not match the terrain as seen from the ground, with deeper valleys and higher ridges than expected. The video also covers the golf swings on the surface, the microgravity experiments on the way home, a precursor to those done today on the International Space Station, and the value of the samples for understanding the formation of the solar system and what the Moon is made of.