Apollo 14: Mission to Fra Mauro | Full Documentary

Video from the channel Astro Launch about Apollo 14, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 36:24. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A compilation about the Apollo 14 mission that combines three pieces: a recent introduction in which a commentator reviews the mission's scientific achievements, the period film about the flight to Fra Mauro, and a tour of the landing site reconstructed with Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery. It covers the six docking attempts between the command module Kitty Hawk and the lunar module Antares, the false abort signal that was resolved by reprogramming the lunar module's computer, the landing radar failure, the two moonwalks by Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell, Stuart Roosa's work in orbit, and the return.

Apollo 14 launched on January 31, 1971, after the failure of Apollo 13, which had failed to land at that same destination, with Shepard in command ten years after his flight on Freedom 7 (May 5, 1961). Fra Mauro was of interest because it might contain ancient crustal material ejected by the impact that formed the Imbrium basin. The introduction stresses that, after Apollo 13, nothing was taken for granted, and links the microgravity experiments on the return trip to those done today on the International Space Station and to the return to the Moon.

Shepard set foot on the Moon 114 hours and 22 minutes after launch. The astronauts used the MET, a two-wheeled cart for tools and samples, and set up a science station with a nuclear generator, a seismometer, charged-particle experiments, a laser retroreflector and a mortar. The first moonwalk lasted 4 hours 50 minutes and the second 4 hours 35 minutes, about nine and a half hours in total. During the second, the climb to Cone Crater took two and a half hours, half an hour more than planned. The LRO segment shows they stopped about 150 feet (roughly 46 m) from the rim without seeing it. Liftoff came 33.5 hours after landing, and the spacecraft returned on February 9, 1971 with about 95 pounds (roughly 43 kg) of samples.