Apollo 14 Mission To Fra Mauro (1971)

Video from the channel AIRBOYD about Apollo 14, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 29:01. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

Copy of NASA's film about the Apollo 14 mission (AS-509). The narration links Alan Shepard's first flight, aboard Freedom 7 on 5 May 1961, to the launch on 31 January 1971 aboard a Saturn V. Shepard is the commander; Edgar Mitchell descends with him in the Antares lunar module, while Stuart Roosa stays in lunar orbit in the Kitty Hawk command module.

The mission's problems follow one another: docking with Antares fails several times because the probe's capture latches do not engage, and it is only achieved on the sixth attempt; once in lunar orbit, a false abort signal forces the lunar module computer to be reprogrammed from MIT within two hours, and during the descent itself the landing radar gives trouble. After the landing, Shepard steps onto the Moon at 114 hours 22 minutes into the mission, and Mitchell follows him four minutes later. They deploy the automatic scientific station and, on the second moonwalk, try to reach the rim of Cone crater by pushing the MET cart up the slope, stopping less than 150 feet short of it. Then come the liftoff, the inspection of the command module, the docking, the jettisoning of Antares onto the Moon, and the return to Earth.

Footage of the mission itself, of mission control in Houston and statements by scientists, edited by NASA in 1971, before Apollo 15. This copy is credited to NASA/JSC.

Fra Mauro had been Apollo 13's thwarted target. Scientists chose it for the material ejected by the impact that created the Imbrium basin, hoping to obtain very ancient lunar crust. The crew spent nine and a half hours outside the module, a record at the time, and returned with 95 pounds of samples. Among the early findings the film reports are rocks with potassium and uranium ten times more abundant than in the Apollo 11 and 12 samples.