IN THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON - APOLLO 15 - ASTRONAUTS: JIM IRWIN, DAVID SCOTT AND AL WORDEN. COMMAN

Video from the channel British Movietone about Apollo 15, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 27:01. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

NASA film about the Apollo 15 mission that follows the crew from launch to return. It combines surface footage shot by the astronauts and by the television camera of the Lunar Roving Vehicle, images from mission control in Houston, the rocket's launch, the splashdown and the press conference afterward. It shows the descent of the lunar module Falcon into a valley between the Apennine mountains and Hadley Rille, the deployment of the Rover, the collection of rocks and subsurface core samples, the installation of a scientific station with drilling for heat-flow probes, and the hammer-and-feather demonstration, which reach the ground at the same time. Also shown are the liftoff of the Falcon filmed from the Rover, the docking with the command module, the launch of a subsatellite into lunar orbit, and Al Worden's spacewalk to retrieve the camera film.

The footage corresponds to the mission itself: the launch was on July 26, 1971 at 9:34, the first surface excursion on July 31 and the second on August 1; the subsatellite was released on August 4 and re-entry took place on August 7. The film was edited following the mission. At the end of this copy, a brief newsreel clip unrelated to Apollo 15 slips in.

The crew consisted of Dave Scott, commander and veteran of Gemini 8 and Apollo 9; Jim Irwin, lunar module pilot; and Al Worden, pilot of the command module Endeavour, who remained in orbit with a mapping camera, a panoramic camera, a laser altimeter and sensors to analyze the composition of the crust. On the surface, notable finds include a piece of primitive lunar crust nicknamed the Genesis rock and a core sample about 2.6 m deep that passed through 58 distinct layers. The lunar liftoff came 171 hours and 37 minutes after launch from Earth. On the way back, one of the three parachutes failed to fully open, with no consequences since the system was designed to work with two. At the press conference, Scott explains the plaque bearing 14 names of deceased astronauts and cosmonauts and the Fallen Astronaut figurine left on the Moon.