MOON, SCAMS AND BUGGY - APOLLO 15 - A Dose of Space #26

Video from the channel AstroKevin, la Chaîne Espace et Astronomie about Apollo 15, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 11:44. Language: French. Video type: Documentary.

A French-language educational episode looking back at the Apollo 15 mission (AS-510) fifty years on: the development of the flight, the debut of the lunar rover, its scientific results, and two later controversies — the commemorative envelopes affair and the memorial statuette affair.

David Scott, Alfred Worden and James Irwin launched from Cape Canaveral on 26 July 1971 at 13:34 UTC aboard a Saturn V. The author explains the transposition and docking manoeuvre with the lunar module and why the stack was not assembled before launch: this allowed the launch escape tower to be retained. On 30 July, the lunar module Falcon separated from Endeavour and landed in the Hadley–Apennine region, chosen because it combined a mare area, a mountain massif and a rille. The dust print left by the landing was photographed in 2008 by the Japanese probe SELENE. In 1972 it emerged that the crew had carried commemorative envelopes for a German company without NASA's knowledge. As a result, the crew lost its backup slot for Apollo 17 and never flew again.

The crew carried out three moonwalks over three days. With the LRV they covered more than 27 km, never straying so far that they could not walk back. The rover's camera, remotely operated from Earth, let geologists inspect the terrain on their own. Before departure, the PFS-1 subsatellite, carried in the SIM bay, was released into lunar orbit and remained active until January 1973. The crew secretly left on the Moon the Fallen Astronaut memorial, a plaque and a statuette by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck, revealing it only at the post-mission press conference.