A hard landing, the first rover, and the Genesis Rock

The Falcon module touched down on 30 July near Hadley Rille beneath the Apennine Mountains at more than 2 m/s — the hardest landing of any crewed Apollo mission. The impact drew a startled “Bam!” from Irwin, and the ship settled at a tilt of nearly seven degrees.

Apollo 15 was the first mission to bring a Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) to the Moon — after unfolding it and getting it running (with initially non-functioning front steering), Scott set off with the words “Okay, out of detent, we’re moving” on the first drive on another world. The rover allowed the crew to range farther from the lander than ever before and to visit the edge of Hadley Rille.

On the second moonwalk, on the flank of Mons Hadley Delta, the crew discovered a sample near Spur crater called the Genesis Rock — a fragment of anorthosite believed to be a remnant of the Moon’s oldest crust. On the final day, Scott, in front of the television camera, simultaneously dropped a hammer and a falcon feather to demonstrate Galileo’s finding that, without air resistance, all bodies fall at the same rate — both hit the surface together. The mission was later marred by controversy: the crew had brought hundreds of unauthorized postal covers to the Moon intended for sale to collectors, which, once exposed in 1972, earned them a reprimand and ended their spaceflight careers.