50th anniversary of Apollo 15

Itssoeasy

https://youtu.be/QI53Ed2nS5w

Today is the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 15. It was the first “J” mission which made the missions more science based and was the first to include the lunar rover. Lift off occurred on July 26th, 1971 from launch pad 39A. The crew consisted of commander Dave Scott, a project Gemini veteran and a member of the Apollo 9 mission. Al worden as CMP and James Irvin as LMP. The CM and LM were called endeavour and Falcon responsibility. 

Apollo 15 had some memorable moments and some controversies. There was the lunar rover which greatly expanded the distance the astronauts could cover during EVAs on the lunar surface. There was the fallen astronaut statue which was left on the surface of the moon which was done by Dave Scott when the lunar rover camera was pointing away from him. There was the postage cover controversy which involved the astronauts bringing postage covers on the mission which didn’t go down well at all and deke slayton removed the crew from their back up crew position on Apollo 17. Dave Scott performed the experiment with the hammer and feature to show them falling at the same speed.

The lunar landing occurred on July 30th and was the hardest landing of a lunar module to that point which left the LM at an angle which the astronauts were worried it would tip over. The hatch which was used normally to pass between the CSM and LM was opened on the lunar surface and allowed the astronauts to take pictures from an angle not normally taken from. The crew of Apollo 15 also returned what is known as the Genesis rock from the moon. The take off of the LM falcon was supposed to be captured by the camera on the rover but due to the time delay between the moon and earth, it didn’t capture it. They would get it right on Apollo 17.

The crew returned to earth after jettisoning the LM Falcon and crashing it into the lunar surface. On the return to earth the first deep space EVA took place to recover film from the SM by CMP Al Worden. The crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on August 7th, 1971 with only two parachutes working but due to the redundancy built into the Apollo spacecraft, it only needed two to land safely.

edit: both my original link of the launch and one I found to replace it won’t show up and I can’t remove the video. The link to the video is below.

https://youtu.be/bKCrMDUHgCc

Beeker

One of my favourite Apollo flights. First of the J missions and packed with science.