MISSION NASA APOLLO 14 À L'ATTERRISSAGE LUNAIRE DE FRA MAURO

Video from the channel PeriscopeFilm about Apollo 14, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 28:40. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

NASA film about the Apollo 14 mission to Fra Mauro, in the lunar highlands. It opens with Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 flight on May 5, 1961, and jumps ten years to the launch of the Saturn V on January 31, 1971, with Shepard in command, Stuart Roosa at the controls of the command module Kitty Hawk, and Edgar Mitchell, who descends with him in the lunar module Antares. It follows the incidents of the trip: the docking that only succeeded on the sixth attempt, the erroneous Antares abort signal that forced the lunar module's computer to be reprogrammed from the ground, and the landing radar failure, which was solved by resetting its circuit breaker. Then come the descent with the actual communications, the two surface excursions, the deployment of the automatic scientific station, and the use of the MET hand cart. It ends with the lunar liftoff, the new docking with Kitty Hawk, the weightlessness experiments on the way back, and the reentry on February 9, 1971.

This is 1971 footage: shots from the mission itself (onboard cameras, television and photography from the surface and lunar orbit), scenes from mission control in Houston, and statements from scientists. NASA edited it after the return, and the channel publishes it as-is as archival material.

Apollo 14 took up the destination that Apollo 13 could not reach after aborting near the Moon. Fra Mauro was thought to originate from material ejected by the impact that formed the Imbrium basin, which would allow the collection of rock from the ancient crust. According to the narration, the first excursion lasted 4 hours and 50 minutes, and the second, 4 hours and 35 minutes, a record total of about nine and a half hours. On the second, the astronauts gave up reaching the rim of Cone crater because of oxygen consumption and stopped less than 150 feet away, something that was only learned a week later through photographic analysis. The crew returned with about 95 pounds of lunar samples.