NASA MISSIONS APOLLO Apollo 14 Mission to Fra Mauro

Video from the channel Nasa Library about Apollo 14, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 28:25. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

A NASA film that covers the Apollo 14 mission from start to finish: the launch with the Saturn V, the journey to the Moon, the descent of the Antares lunar module, the two moonwalks by Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell on the surface in the Fra Mauro area, and the return to Earth. It combines mission footage, audio of the communications with the crew, scenes from mission control, and statements by scientists about the site's geological interest. It shows the two incidents that nearly prevented the landing: the docking failures between the command module Kitty Hawk and the Antares, resolved on the sixth attempt, and a false abort signal in the lunar module. Fixing it required reprogramming its computer against the clock from MIT and testing the change beforehand on a simulator at Cape Kennedy. On the surface, the deployment of the automated scientific station is shown: a nuclear generator, a seismometer, a laser reflector, charged-particle experiments, a mortar, and the "thumper" of controlled charges. The use of the equipment-carrying cart and the climb toward Cone Crater also appear.

The footage corresponds to the mission itself, launched on 31 January 1971 and back on 9 February 1971, supplemented by material filmed in mission control. The narration mentions the three missions still remaining and the lunar rover that Apollo 15 would introduce, which places the film's production in 1971, between the two missions.

The film opens with the Freedom 7 flight of 5 May 1961, the first crewed American spaceflight, to underline that Shepard, in command of Apollo 14, was closing out the decade he himself had opened. Fra Mauro was the destination Apollo 13 had failed to reach; there, the hope was to collect material ejected by the impact that formed the Imbrium basin, very ancient and different from previous samples. According to the account, the third stage and later the lunar module's ascent stage were deliberately crashed into the Moon, and the seismometers recorded the impacts. The first moonwalk lasted 4 hours and 50 minutes and the second 4 hours and 35 minutes, a record of about nine and a half hours of exploration. On the second, the pair stopped less than 150 feet (about 45 m) from the rim of Cone Crater because of oxygen consumption, something only discovered a week later when the photographs were analysed. During the return with Stuart Roosa, the crew gave zero-gravity demonstrations and came back with about 95 pounds (about 43 kg) of samples.