Apollo 15 is considered the most successful of the Apollo flights, and was the first NASA mission whose sole purpose was to advance human knowledge as opposed to validating equipment and procedures for future missions.
But before we talk about all of Apollo 15's achievements, we're going to take some time to eulogize Alan Shepard, the first American in space, who lived a full life after his time as the commander of Apollo 14. He left his philadering ways behind him, doted on his daughters, and did what he could to repaire his relationship with his wife, Louise who had heard rumrs of his unfaithfulness for years. After Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff was published in 1979, the rumors became reality and public knowledge but she chose to never question him about his dalliances nor contemplated leaving him.
Rear Admiral Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. died on July 21, 1998 at age 74. About a month later, before she could spread his ashes, Louise also passed away. Their children spread both of their parent's ashes from a Navy helicopter over Stillwater Cove in front of this Pebble Beach, California home.
Similar to the Apollo 12 mission insignia having a maritime theme since all the crew members were also naval officers, the Apollo 15 insignia had a heavy Air Force motif as each crew member was in the Air Force. The circular patch features stylized red, white, and blue bird flying over Hadley Rille – the lunar region Apollo 15 was to land in. Immediately behind the birds, a line of craters forms the Roman number 15. The Roman numbers were hidden in emphasized outlines of some craters after NASA insisted that the mission number be displayed in Arabic numerals. The artwork is circled in red, with a white band giving the mission and crew names and a blue boarder. The red, white, and blue colored birds represented each of the crew members and matched the Corvettes the astronauts drove while training in Florida.
The Apollo 15 mission landed in the northern portion of the Earth facing side of the moon near foothills and a moutain range called the Apennines, after the range in Italy.
Many scientists consider Hadley base to be not only the most beautiful Apollo landing zones, but also one of the the most geologically interesting.
Because Apollo 15 carried much heavier equipment than previous Apollo missions, the lunar lander Falcon, had a larger engine bell which threw up much more lunar dust that its predecessors and put the crew in blackout conditions before touching down on the lunar surface. The landing is believed to have been the hardest of the moon landings and caused lunar module pilot Jim Irwin to cry out "bam!' after they touched down.
Since this mission would require the crew to travel farther from the lunar lander than ever before, NASA provided the astronauts with an electric rover. By the end of this three EVAs, they had put 17 miles on the vehicle.
The rover was equipped with a camera that could be controlled by scientists back in Houston which, in a way, allowed them to indirectly participate in the EVA from afar.
The most significant lunar rock sample from Apollo 15 was later dubbed the Genesis stone. It is more than four billion years old and believed to be part of the lunar crust around the time the moon was formed.
While on the lunar surface, Dave Scott and Jim Irwin completed three work periods on the lunar surface.
NASA realized that the public loved Alan Shepard's Apollo 14 antics with the golf balls so one of the experiments planned for Apollo 15 was to validate Galileo's theory that when there is no air resistance, objects fall at the same rate due to gravity regardless of their mass.
One of the final acts of mission commander Dave Scott was to move the lunar rover away from the lunar so it could film Falcon's lift off. Before he walked back to the lander, he placed a memorial plaque honoring the 14 known American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had given their lives to advance space exploration. He also left a memorial statue that would ignight a lot of controversy (but you'll have to wait until next week for that story).
While the general public had seen many rocket launches on Earth over the years, this was the first time they were able to see an Apollo lunar module lift off from the lunar surface.
After Dave Scott and Jim Irwin returned to lunar orbit and docked Falcon with command module Enveavour, and the crew left lunar orbit on their return voyage to Earth, command module pilot Al Worden complete the first spacewalk in deep space, leaving the safety of the command module to retrieve some film cannisters located in external bays.
Worden caught a glimpse of Irwin standing with his upper torse outside the spaceship. The moon looming in the background made Worden wish he had a camera to capture the sight. Artist Pierre Mion drew the scene for National Geographic.
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