Apollo 15
Apollo 15, in July 1971, was the first mission with a lunar rover. Scott, Worden and Irwin spent three days at the foot of the lunar Apennines and returned over 77 kg of rock, including the famous “Genesis Rock”.
◉ REÁLNÉ FOTO · NASA / images.nasa.govContents
living encyclopedia entrypollo 15 was the first of the extended “J” missions — a three-day stay, a lunar rover and a strong focus on geology. The rover extended the astronauts’ reach from metres to kilometres, opening up the Hadley Rille valley.
A veteran of Gemini 8 (1966, with Neil Armstrong) and Apollo 9 (1969). On Apollo 15 he became the seventh person to walk on the Moon — the postal-covers affair meant he never flew again.
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A West Point graduate and Air Force pilot. He performed the first-ever deep-space spacewalk, more than 300,000 km from the nearest celestial body. Apollo 15 was his only spaceflight.
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A Naval Academy graduate and Air Force pilot. The eighth person to walk on the Moon; Apollo 15 was his only spaceflight. After leaving NASA he devoted himself to religious missionary work.
open person →David Scott and James Irwin drove the rover over 27 km and found a 4.1-billion-year-old anorthosite fragment — the “Genesis Rock”, a sample of the Moon’s primordial crust. Scott also dropped a hammer and a falcon feather on camera to demonstrate Galileo’s law of free fall in a vacuum.
Apollo 15 was the first of the Apollo program’s three extended “J missions” — a longer stay on the Moon, more science, and for…
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The Falcon module touched down on 30 July near Hadley Rille beneath the Apennine Mountains at more than 2 m/s — the hardest…
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While Scott and Irwin were on the surface, Worden spent nearly three days alone in lunar orbit operating instruments in the…
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MISSION IN NUMBERS
- Apollo 15 was the first of the “J missions” — with a longer lunar stay and the first-ever Lunar Roving Vehicle.
- It was the hardest landing of any crewed Apollo mission — the module touched down at over 2 m/s and tilted nearly seven degrees.
- David Scott recreated Galileo’s experiment on the Moon, dropping a hammer and a feather together — without air resistance, they hit the surface at the same time.
- The sample known as the Genesis Rock, found near Spur crater, is among the oldest fragments of lunar crust ever discovered.
- Alfred Worden performed the first-ever deep-space spacewalk on the way home — more than 300,000 km from the nearest celestial body.
- Because of unauthorized postal covers carried to the Moon, the crew was reprimanded after their return, and none of the three astronauts ever flew in space again.
