Apollo 15 - 1971| Movietone Moment | 30 July 2021
Video from the channel British Movietone about Apollo 15, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 26:57. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.
What it shows
The video features the 1971 film about Apollo 15, narrated in English, which covers the mission from start to finish. It opens with the descent of the lunar module Falcon, with David Scott and James Irwin aboard, over the lunar Apennines until it lands on a plain beside Hadley Rille, while Alfred Worden remains in orbit in the command module Endeavour. It then goes back to the launch on July 26, 1971, and follows the three surface excursions: the deployment of the lunar rover, which on the first day had no front-wheel steering and worked again the next day; the stops at Elbow and St. George craters; the setup of the science station and the heat-flow probes; and the discovery, at the Apennine front, of a crystalline rock considered part of the Moon's primitive crust, nicknamed Genesis Rock. The third excursion takes the astronauts to the edge of the rille and ends with the hammer-and-feather demonstration, dropped at the same time in tribute to Galileo.
When and where it was filmed
The footage was taken during the mission, between July and August 1971: images from the rover's television camera, controlled from Houston, film shot aboard and from the vehicle, and shots from mission control. It includes the Falcon's liftoff seen from the rover, the docking in orbit, Worden's spacewalk to retrieve the film cartridges, and the splashdown on August 7, with one of the three parachutes collapsed.
Context
The narration presents Apollo 15 as a leap in the scientific exploration of the Moon: the first mission with a rover, a drill core about 8.5 feet long with 58 layers, some 1,400 photographs, and one more day in lunar orbit than previous missions. On the last orbit, the crew released a subsatellite, the first launched from a crewed spacecraft. The film closes with the plaque bearing 14 names of deceased astronauts and cosmonauts and the Fallen Astronaut figurine that the crew left at Hadley.