Fwd: 43 Years Since Triumphant Mission of Apollo 14

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: February 11, 2014 10:05:43 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: 43 Years Since Triumphant Mission of Apollo 14

Prior to the launch of Apollo 14 I was concerned that the two small pyrotechnic batteries A & B could fail, as they were not able to be recharged like the Entry batteries were. So I developed a procedure to fire the Command Module pyrotechnics by using the 16 mm camera cable that connects to a Utility Power Outlet. One connector to be cut off exposing the 3 wires one 28 volt wire and one power return could then be inserted in the sequencer box GSE access connector. The procedure was documented in a memorandum to PA/Assistant Program Manager for Flight Safety, from EB8/Manger, CSM/LM Sequential Subsystem (Gary W. Johnson), Subject: Emergency procedure to fire CSM pyrotechnics if both pyrotechnic buses have failed. Memorandum EB8-1/71-042 was dated January 28, 1971. Step number 9 was for "No docking probe retract", as retracting the probe required firing a pyro.

 

See area highlighted in Yellow below when the crew was having trouble getting capture to retract the probe (two of three capture latches required to enable pyro circuit). When the problem occurred I went back to the office to get the memorandum. To make sure the crew could do the procedure, Apollo astronaut Ken Mattingly went with me with the crew tool kit to a previously flown CM in the Auditorium (Teague) he was able fix a cable and gain access to the Lunar Docking Events Controller (LDEC) GSE connector J5 located in the right hand equipment bay. This showed the procedure could be done. We then hurried back and found out the crew was finally able to dock; however, knowing we had a backup procedure allowed the mission to continue.

 

The procedure is not mentioned in the write up below, but was later used on the first Skylab mission.  

 

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
February 8th, 2014

Juicing It: 43 Years Since Triumphant Mission of Apollo 14 (Part 1)

By Ben Evans

 

Bathed by the intense lunar sunlight, Antares sits on the undulating plain of Fra Mauro in February 1971. Photo Credit: NASA

Forty-three years ago this week, the sixth team of Apollo lunar explorers—and only the third to accomplish a landing on the Moon's dusty surface—headed back to Earth after a mission which restored confidence in America's space program after the near-disastrous Apollo 13. Astronauts Al Shepard, Stu Roosa, and Ed Mitchell brought a scientific yield back home which illustrated that the Moon was a far more complex celestial body than previously believed. The mission of Apollo 14 itself was extraordinarily complex, but as well as being a technical story, it was also a very human story of one man's battle against almost impossible odds to regain flight status, a story which carried more than its fair share of highs and lows … and the story of the Moon's first golfer.

The Apollo 14 crew did not share the same camaraderie as Pete Conrad's Apollo 12 team, but a few episodes of note during their 19 months of training have been highlighted by Neal Thompson, in his biography of Shepard, Light This Candle. One geological training expedition took Shepard and Mitchell and their backups, Gene Cernan and Joe Engle, to a remote part of Bavaria, in the southeastern corner of Germany. Each evening, the men threw back huge tankards of beer and on one occasion they drunkenly climbed an old bell tower, just outside Munich, then had to pound on the doors of their dormitory which the proprietor had locked at 10 p.m. On another training expedition in southern Arizona, Cernan arranged to cross the border into Mexico to visit a friend's restaurant for dinner. When they arrived, they were shown into a motel room and on a dresser stood four bottles of scotch and four room keys. Expecting dinner, the astronauts were shocked when four Mexican woman entered the room, each hopeful of sex with an astronaut that night.

"For the next 45 minutes," wrote Neal Thompson, "in a mélange of tortured Spanish Spanish and charades, the spacemen tried to explain why they couldn't stay. They each tried what little Spanish they knew: el presidente…no es possible…we can't stay out late…we can't drink…have to train for mission in the morning…going to Moon…la luna…During the ride back, the astronauts joked that they didn't even get dinner." Nor did any of them get chance to surreptitiously grab the bottles of scotch. …

The Apollo 14 crew, from left, consisted of Stu Roosa, Al Shepard and Ed Mitchell. They are backdropped by their official mission patch. Photo Credit: NASA

For Al Shepard, who had overcome an inner-ear condition known as Ménière's Disease and whose career had seesawed from being America's first man in space, to grounded and unable to even fly jets, to chief of the astronaut corps, to experimental medical procedure, to recovery and back onto flight status, the period from 1961 to 1971 had been a frustrating, though remarkable, decade. On Apollo 14, he would become the only member of the Original Seven Mercury astronauts to set foot on the Moon, and he trained feverishly for the opportunity. He flew the unforgiving Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) more times than Gene Cernan could remember, taught himself to fly helicopters, and sweated every detail of the mission he was about to undertake. His crewmate Stu Roosa, the command module pilot, would remain in lunar orbit, whilst Shepard and lunar module pilot Ed Mitchell descended to the Moon's Fra Mauro foothills for two days of exploration.

Launch day, 31 January 1971, dawned cloudy and dreary at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. A persistent drizzle turned into a Sunday afternoon downpour, and the 3:23 p.m. EST launch was postponed by 40 minutes in the hope it would subside. The "window" for that day actually extended until 7:12 p.m., after which Apollo 14 would have to be postponed to 1 March. From within the command module, which they had named "Kitty Hawk" in honour of the location in North Carolina from where the Wright Brothers conducted the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air flight in 1903. Shepard, Roosa, and Mitchell felt supremely confident that they could not suffer the massive electrical and other systems failures which had befallen Apollo 13. A third oxygen tank, isolated from the others, was included aboard their service module, together with a spare 400-amp battery, capable of supplying them with enough electrical power to handle all of their needs from any point in the mission.

All three men were keenly aware of President Richard Nixon's stance on manned spaceflight; the axe on Apollos 18 and 19 had fallen barely four months earlier, and there were noises to cancel Apollos 16 and 17, too. Congress had slashed NASA's budget to its lowest level in a decade, and for an apathetic public Apollo 14 encompassed far more than "just" going to the Moon: The crew had to restore a dimming sense of national pride and restore confidence in the program.

Beneath a gloomy sky, Apollo 14 takes flight on the afternoon of 31 January 1971. Photo Credit: NASA

Before they could do that, however, they had to wait for the forces of nature to take their course. Thankfully, the storm lashed the launch pad only briefly and then headed out to sea, and the countdown resumed and proceeded without further incident. The access arm to the command module's hatch was swung away, and the call of "Initiate firing command" signified the transition of the remainder of the countdown to the computers. With 50 seconds to go, the Saturn V rocket transferred its systems onto full internal power; and from the astronauts' perspective, they could both hear and feel the behemoth coming to life, far below them. "He felt the first distant whispers of Saturn V flexing its sinews," Shepard later wrote in third-person narrative of the experience in his memoir, Moon Shot, "the rush of thousands of gallons of propellants hurtling downward through their lines, turbopumps spinning … He had the wild thought that the giant rocket was ten inches shorter than before fuelling. How could they get to the Moon with a booster that had shrunk? The fuel, of course. Millions of pounds of cold fuel contracting the rocket, bending metal …"

Nine seconds before launch, the Ignition Sequence Start command was given and kerosene and liquid oxygen poured into the combustion chambers of the Saturn's five F-1 first-stage engines. Louise Shepard was bracing herself with her friend, Dorel Abbot, against a hurricane fence, three miles (five km) from Pad 39A, and her recollection of those final seconds was of little more than a steadily increasing brightness of flame. The sound would not reach the assembled VIPs for 15 long seconds. "The Saturn V roared and screamed," wrote Shepard, "anchored to its launch pad by huge, hold-down arms chaining it to Earth until computers judged the giant was howling with full energy." That energy was unleashed at 4:03 p.m. EST, when countdown clocks in Mission Control touched zero and Apollo 14 headed firstly for Earth orbit and later the Moon.

As they left Earth, Shepard, Roosa, and Mitchell heard little more than distant, muted thunder, followed by a very gentle, almost jerky, motion as they gently rose from Pad 39A. The spectators saw something quite different: a terrifying, shrieking cataclysm of fire and thunder which sent flocks of birds fleeing in all directions and which pummeled chests and the soles of feet with intense shockwaves. Nor was the impact only felt at KSC. Nearly 1,250 miles (2,000 km) to the north, at Palisades Park, N.J., the roar of the Saturn shook atmospheric instruments at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory. …

The smooth ride gave way to a somewhat bumpier one when the first stage was jettisoned and the J-2 engines of the Saturn's S-II second stage ignited. "Without constant acceleration and with the sudden cut-off of stage one," wrote Shepard, "the three men jerked forward in their seats. The accordion stretched out and then compressed again; the fuels sloshed and the astronauts felt a series of bumps, just like a train wreck." Next came the jettisoning of the escape tower, which uncovered the command module's windows, but through which they could see virtually nothing, save the profound blackness of space. Thirteen minutes after leaving Florida, and with the S-II and the first burn of the restartable S-IVB third stage finally behind them, Shepard, Roosa, and Mitchell were in orbit.

"That alone," exulted Shepard, "was almost worth the entire trip!"

The Apollo 14 command and service module, Kitty Hawk, with the Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine clearly visible. Photo Credit: NASA

Thus far, Apollo 14 seemed charmed and  the crew was given the customary go-ahead for Translunar Injection (TLI), the second burn of the S-IVB which would propel them toward the Moon. "There was no sensation of movement," wrote Shepard, "only the delicious freedom of floating without weight." Next on the agenda was a time-honored task assigned to the command module pilot: for Roosa was now to apply 19 months of training to the intricate transposition and docking maneuver to extract the lunar module (named "Antares," after the brightest star in the constellation Scorpio) from the top of the spent S-IVB.

With pinpoint precision, Roosa guided Kitty Hawk's docking probe into the cone atop the roof of Antares' ascent stage, and all three men waited for three capture latches to signify a soft docking, after which they would retract the docking probe and pull the spacecraft together in a metallic embrace. The soft dock, however, never came. Perplexed, Roosa pulled away, informed Mission Control in Houston, Texas, then tried a second time. Again, there was no success. In Mission Control, there was similar confusion: for the mechanical latches needed no electrical power to operate, no pneumatic pressure or drive—they were supposed to click into place and lock. Huddled around a console, flight controllers and managers speculated that maybe a piece of debris, or even dirt, could be lodged inside the mechanism. Their consensus was that Roosa should try again.

Roosa did try again … and again, and again. No fewer than five attempts were made to "soft dock" with Antares, all of which proved fruitless. More worryingly, every time he maneuvered Kitty Hawk toward the lander, he was consuming more and more of the precious fuel which would be needed later in the mission. Shepard was becoming increasingly irritated, reporting "No joy" after each attempt. At length, he offered to depressurize the command module's cabin, open the apex hatch, and withdraw the probe into the cabin to determine what was afoot. When Roosa had moved Kitty Hawk up to Antares with the tunnel open, Shepard would then have poked out his suited arms to align the two spacecraft for hard docking. Mission Control turned him down flat, declaring that such an exercise was too risky.

Instead, they advocated having Roosa come in harder and faster, ramming the probe into the docking cone and hopefully allowing the capture latches to "telescope" into position from the impact. Backup crewman Gene Cernan also advised them to push the retract switch a split-second before the two craft touched, thereby using the probe only to align the two collars. "That would drive Kitty Hawk hard up against Antares," wrote Shepard, "and hold it there long enough to engage the 12 latches of the docking rings directly. If the smaller latches, which normally made the first connection, were faulty, then they could be bypassed and a hard dock achieved." Aware of the dwindling supplies of propellant, Roosa asked for a fuel status reading from Mission Control and was advised to make one more docking attempt before that was "re-evaluated." From his seat, Shepard had by this point had enough of gentle efforts to capture the lander and conserve fuel. It was time to push the throttle full forward. Turning to his command module pilot, he told Roosa: "Just forget about conserving fuel. This time, juice it!"

Minutes later, as some cautious managers in Mission Control continued to debate whether or not to cancel the flight, Roosa juiced it and the two craft came together. A welcoming cacaphony of clacks sounded through Kitty Hawk's cabin, and when Shepard announced success, applause broke out in Houston. However, they were still not out of the woods. It would later be determined that dust or debris had indeed prevented a soft docking, but the fear remained that a similar problem could arise as Shepard and Mitchell rose from the Moon to redock in a few days' time. Until the problem could be properly understood, and assurances received that disaster would not befall Apollo 14 in lunar orbit, the landing remained in question. The new head of Flight Operations, Sigurd Sjoberg, who had replaced Chris Kraft the previous year, told his troops that he wanted to be sure "that this thing is indeed satisfactory for docking, again, before we commit to the Moon landing."

Al Shepard (foreground) and Ed Mitchell, pictured in the lunar module simulator during training. Photo Credit: NASA

By now, the astronauts had been awake for 19 hours and were directed to get some sleep. That did not, however, inhibit Mitchell from conducting an unusual task during what he already expected would be his one and only spaceflight. For some time, he had been fascinated by the mysteries of extrasensory perception (ESP)—for which he felt neither religion or science provided a satisfactory explanation—and a few weeks before launch, he and some acquaintances had agreed to perform an experiment. Forty-five minutes into each sleep period, during the flight to and from the Moon, he would attempt to transmit thoughts from space. He started on the very first night. From within his sleeping bag, and by the glimmer of a flashlight, Mitchell pulled out a clipboard on which were written a series of random numbers, each one designating a typical ESP symbol.

"Mitchell chose a number," wrote Andrew Chaikin in his book A Man on the Moon, "and then, with intense concentration, imagined the corresponding symbol for several seconds. He repeated the process several times, with different numbers, knowing that on Earth, four men were sitting in silence, trying to see the pictures in their minds." In fact, Stu Roosa saw Mitchell's flashlight during the first night's sleep period and did not think to ask him about it the following morning. Not until after the mission, whilst reading the newspaper, would Shepard learn of Mitchell's experiment.

With the exception of the lingering worry about the docking mechanism, the remainder of Apollo 14's cruise to the Moon was uneventful. As it drew closer, the astronauts began to discern traces of greys and browns—totally different to the bright object that they had known for all of their lives. Eighty-two hours after launch, Roosa fired the big Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine to drop them into an elliptical orbit with a low point of just nine miles (15 km) above the surface. This maneuver essentially eliminated the need for Antares to perform the early stages of descent and represented a refinement of mission techniques since Apollo 12. The propellant savings would give Shepard additional time to hover to find a suitable landing spot in the hummocky Fra Mauro.

By this time, experiments on Earth had satisfied mission controllers that the astronauts could repeat their "juice-it" maneuver to bring Kitty Hawk and Antares together if a similar problem arose in lunar orbit. The landing was officially back on the schedule. On their 12th circuit of the Moon, early on 5 February 1971, the lunar module undocked and began its descent. "I have Cone Crater, Triplet and Doublet!" Shepard radioed excitedly as the main surface targets came into view. The target point was close to Doublet. Despite their inherent knowledge of the landing site from months spent studying Lunar Orbiter photographs, the view was profound. Shepard called it a "wild place" and Mitchell considered it to be "the most stark and desolate-looking piece of country I've ever seen."

Pictured toward the end of one of their Moonwalks, this view captures the desolation of the Fra Mauro site. Photo Credit: NASA

Apollo 14 was not out of the woods yet. In the center of Antares' control panel was a red circular push button labelled "Abort." Its purpose did not require a huge amount of explanation, except that pressing it would set in motion a chain of events to terminate the lunar landing, activating the ascent engine and boosting Shepard and Mitchell back up toward Roosa and Kitty Hawk. "The switch," wrote Gene Kranz, one of the mission's four flight directors, "had electrical contacts to issue signals to the LM engines, computer and abort electronics. When the abort switch for Apollo 14's LM had been manufactured, a small piece of metal had been left in the switch. Now, in zero gravity, and with both crew and ground oblivious, this piece of metal was floating among the contacts of the switch, randomly making intermittent connections."

Since the drama of Apollo 13, more than $15 million-worth of modifications had been incorporated into the Mission Operations Control Room, one of which included changes to help a controller to rapidly identify any change in status in critical spacecraft systems. From his chair as Antares' control engineer for descent and landing, Dick Thorson glanced at his monitor and noticed a red light blink on; it seemed to imply that either Shepard or Mitchell had pushed the Abort button. Thorson was perplexed. Why would they do that? They had yet to begin their Powered Descent. Maybe there had been a telemetry patching error to the light panel on his console; a quick check, however, confirmed that everything was as it should be. As the engineer's eyes widened, it became clear that, if this was for real, it signalled bad news for the landing at Fra Mauro. In the back room, two of Thorson's colleagues, Hal Loden and Bob Carlton, also noticed the problem and suggested that one of the astronauts should tap the panel on which the Abort switch was located, in an effort to resolve the indication.

"Gerry," Thorson called up Flight Director Gerry Griffin on the intercom loop, "I'm seeing an abort indication in the lunar module. Have the crew verify that the button is not depressed."

Capcom Fred Haise duly passed the request up to Antares, and Mitchell tapped the panel with a flashlight. The abort light blinked off, then came back on again a few minutes later. "What's wrong with this ship?" Shepard wondered. They were barely 90 minutes away from the initiation of Powered Descent, and the landing was temporarily waved off until a solution could be found. "Thorson's dilemma was a thorny one," explained Kranz in his autobiography, Failure Is Not An Option. "To land, we needed to bypass the switch, but if we had problems during landing, we needed the switch to abort. It was a hell of a risk-gain trade." Thorson's team identified a software "patch" for Antares' computer, which would lock out both the Abort and Abort Stage switches, allowing the mission to continue. However, in an emergency, should Shepard and Mitchell need to perform an abort close to the surface, they would need to use the keyboard to manually initiate the abort program. Gerry Griffin was willing to accept the risk, confident that Shepard would probably do the same. He rescheduled the landing attempt for two hours' time, on the next pass.

Key to this effort was the Draper Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which had developed the guidance and navigation systems for the Apollo spacecraft. Their engineers now shifted into high gear to wring out the software patch and make it work. Within the hour, a procedure had been devised, whereby the Abort switch could be bypassed when the descent engine was ignited and then re-enabled immediately thereafter. Amidst ratty communications with Antares, Haise radioed up instructions to Mitchell. First, the astronauts would start the descent engine at low power, using the acceleration to move the contaminating metal—probably a bit of solder—away from the switch contacts. As soon as Shepard fired the engine, Mitchell would input a string of 16 commands to enable steering and guidance, then another string of 16 more commands to disable the Abort program, then another 14 commands to lock into the landing radar and the descent software.

The Fra Mauro landing site, as viewed from Ed Mitchell's window on the right-hand side of Antares' cabin. Photo Credit: NASA

"This entire sequence," wrote Kranz, "would occur as the crew was descending to the Moon. The mission now rested on an emergency patch to the flight software that was less than two hours old, had been simulated only once and was being performed by a crew that had never practiced it." Nevertheless, when the engine lit, Kranz was astounded that Shepard had lost nothing of his sharpness and marvelous calmness as the instructions were entered into Antares' computer. As the engine climbed steadily toward 10 percent thrust, Thorson monitored his display and saw no evidence that the Abort switch had been activated. So far, the mission was back on track.

"Thank you, Houston," radioed Shepard. "Nice job down there!"

In his biography of Shepard, Neal Thompson related the singular contribution of one young MIT programmer, Don Eyles, who had helped to design Antares' software. Eyles recalled being shocked from sleep as an Air Force car screeched to a halt outside his apartment at two in the morning and a uniformed officer hammered on his door. He was told that he had 90 minutes to come up with a solution for Apollo 14's problems. Eyles threw a jacket over his pyjamas and was driven to his nearby lab to create, virtually from scratch, a substitute program to eliminate Antares' faulty abort signal.

A few minutes into the powered descent, another problem reared its head. Both astronauts were now feeling positively snakebitten. This time, it was the landing radar—the device upon which Shepard and Mitchell would depend to feed them accurate altitude and rate of descent data as they headed for Fra Mauro. The trajectory data from Mission Control could include errors as great as 0.6 miles (1 km), making the radar indispensable. Guidance Officer Will Presley began to wonder why the radar had not locked-on. At first, he advised Griffin to continue the descent, but knew that he would need to call an abort if the radar did not kick in within the next 60 seconds.

From aboard the lander, Mitchell was irritated by the long delay in the radar acquiring the surface. "C'mon, radar," he repeated quietly to himself. At length, Dick Thorson, upon whose shoulders fell the responsibility for the radar, suggested cycling its circuit breaker. When Fred Haise passed up the request, Antares was less than 4.3 miles (seven km) above the surface—if the radar did not come on by 1.8 miles (three km) or so, flight rules demanded that the landing be aborted—and Mitchell could scarcely hide the urgency in his tone: "Come on!"

Shepard plucked out the circuit breaker, cutting its power, then jammed it back into place. "Hell, it works with my toaster," Mitchell quipped. Thankfully, this did the trick and a stream of radar data began flowing into the computer. By the time they reached an altitude of a couple of thousand metres, they could see Cone Crater off to the right, embedded in the crest of a ridge. They passed low over the ridge, heading for their target near Doublet.

"Fat as a goose!" Shepard exulted as he guided Antares toward a perfect touchdown, 174 feet (53 meters) from the intended spot; closer to target than Neil Armstrong or even Pete Conrad had achieved. The Lunar Contact light glimmered blue at 4:17 a.m. EST on 5 February 1971. It was the third time humans had made landfall on an alien body, and Shepard and Mitchell were electrified: primed and ready to begin the expansive program of exploration at Fra Mauro which had been cruelly denied to Apollo 13.

 

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AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
February 9th, 2014

In Search of Cone Crater: 43 Years Since Triumphant Mission of Apollo 14 (Part 2)

By Ben Evans

 

Beneath a gloomy sky, Apollo 14 takes flight on the afternoon of 31 January 1971. Photo Credit: NASA

Forty-three years ago this week, the sixth team of Apollo lunar explorers—and only the third to accomplish a landing on the Moon's dusty surface—headed back to Earth after a mission which restored confidence in America's space program after the near-disastrous Apollo 13. Astronauts Al Shepard, Stu Roosa, and Ed Mitchell brought a scientific yield back home which illustrated that the Moon was a far more complex celestial body than previously believed. The mission of Apollo 14 itself was extraordinarily complex, but it was also a very human story of one man's battle against almost impossible odds to regain flight status, a story which carried more than its fair share of highs and lows … and the story of the Moon's first golfer.

In the early hours of 5 February 1971, five days since leaving Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, Shepard and Mitchell brought their lunar module Antares to a smooth touchdown in the Moon's hummocky Fra Mauro foothills, as Roosa orbited overhead in the command and service module, Kitty Hawk. As described in yesterday's history article, it had not been a perfect descent, having been marred by problems with Antares' critical landing radar, which almost caused the mission to be aborted. In the first few minutes after touching down on the Moon, Mitchell turned to Shepard and asked him if he would really have aborted the mission if the radar had not locked-on in time.

Shepard, ever the test pilot, grinned. "Ed," he said, "you'll never know!"

Earlier, when Capcom Fred Haise had advised him to consider looking over the abort procedures, Shepard responded, with clear sarcasm in his voice, that he was well aware of the rules. Knowing Shepard as everyone did, it seems more than likely that after 10 years waiting for this opportunity to land on the Moon, he would have rewritten the mission rules on the spot: As long as the vehicle continued to fly beautifully and everything else seemed to be going well, he would have attempted to land, even without the aid of the radar. In fact, in his memoir Moon Shot, co-authored with Deke Slayton, he wrote that, with the future of Apollo hanging by a thread, there was no alternative but to land. …

The Apollo 14 crew, pictured during water survival training in October 1971. From left are Al Shepard, Stu Roosa, and Ed Mitchell. Photo Credit: NASA

Others were more skeptical. In his autobiography, Failure Is Not An Option, Flight Director Gene Kranz recalled the feelings of fellow Flight Director Gerry Griffin and his team. "On Apollo 14," he wrote, "the error in the LM computer's knowledge of the actual altitude was almost 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) before the landing radar data update. With an error this great in the computer, Griffin and the [flight controllers] were convinced Shepard would have run out of fuel before landing. But everyone who knew Al never doubted he would have given it a shot. We also never doubted he would have had to abort. The fuel budget was just too tight."

Early on 5 February 1971, it was a moot issue. Shepard and Mitchell had become the third team of human lunar explorers to make landfall on the Moon. Glancing at the bright, undulating terrain of Fra Mauro beyond Antares' triangular windows, both men reported that it was considerably more rugged than Tranquillity Base or the Ocean of Storms. There was certainly more topographic relief, Mitchell added, than they had anticipated by looking at their maps. Even before they ventured outside, a key obstacle of operating on the Moon was apparent: The complete absence of any recognizable features made it incredibly difficult to judge distances. Indeed, Shepard and Mitchell would come face to face with this problem during their second Moonwalk. The lack of a sensible atmosphere lent an unreal clarity to the scene, and the horizon seemed to slope noticeably away from them, framed by a totally black sky. Unlike Earth, they could actually sense that they were on a spherical body.

Just under five hours later, at 8:54 a.m. EST, after abandoning plans to take an early rest period, Shepard dropped down onto the surface of that spherical body and planted his boots into lunar soil. The importance of first words had been on everyone's mind, it seemed, even as Neil Armstrong prepared for Apollo 11, and the need to prove a point and win a bet had been Conrad's primary motivation for what he had said on Apollo 12. In Shepard's case, however, a dozen years since joining the astronaut corps and after the better part of a decade spent chained to a desk, his words were profound for a different reason: for they reflected the end of a long and difficult journey. Not only had he beaten Ménière's Disease, not only would he become the only one of the Original Seven Mercury astronauts to set foot on the Moon … but he had overcome all the odds in being able to fly again. Clinging tentatively onto Antares' ladder, he turned and looked out onto the barren landscape and an eerie silence of ages, all around him.

Al Shepard, pictured here with the MET, became the only member of the Original Seven Mercury astronauts to set foot on the Moon. Photo Credit: NASA

"It's been a long way," he said, wonder evident in his voice, "but we're here."

Moving around the lander, he gazed to the east and could clearly see the ridge which he and Mitchell would attempt to negotiate the following day to reach the 1,000-foot-diameter (300-meter) Cone Crater, whose depth was thought to reach about 250 feet (76 meters). The entire Fra Mauro region was believed to have been formed by ejecta from the impact which created the enormous (and ancient) Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains), in the Moon's northwestern quadrant. It was hoped that by finding and gathering samples from Cone, the astronauts might be able shed new light on the nature of the impact, estimates of whose age range between 3 billion and 4.5 billion years old.

For now, though, Mitchell himself was itching to get outside. With both men on the surface, they began assembling the customary Stars and Stripes, the erectable S-band antenna, the solar wind composition experiment, a rickshaw-like tool carrier known as the Modular Equipment Transporter (MET), and the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP). For the latter, they picked a spot to the west of Antares, setting up the nuclear-powered central station, from which radiated, in a star-like formation, its five main research instruments: the passive and active seismic experiments, which were designed to acquire data about the physical properties of the lunar crust, together with a cold cathode gauge to monitor the density of the Moon's atmosphere, a suprathermal ion detector to measure the composition of its ionosphere, and a charged-particle detector to study the solar wind impinging on the lunar surface.

Of these, the active seismic device is particularly notable, since it required the implantation of three "geophones" onto the surface, in a straight line at distances of 10 feet (three meters), 165 feet (50 meters), and 330 feet (100 meters) from the ALSEP's central station. These provided a sort of mechanical "ear," which Mitchell activated using a "thumper" to produce a series of artificial quakes. "Earlier lunar seismic experiments," Time magazine told its readers on 1 February, "have been largely passive; that is, the seismometers have usually depended on the occurrence of Moonquakes or other natural rumblings to make readings." Now, with the help of the thumper, not dissimilar in shape to a heavily-weighted walking stick, Mitchell was to detonate a series of 21 charges as he walked down the line. The intention was that the geophones would determine the travelling time of seismic waves created by the charges and measure their velocity through the lunar surface material. However, eight charges failed to fire, and Mitchell had a fit over the others. "Houston," he radioed, "this thing's got a pretty good kick to it." Far from having the desired effect of a moderate firecracker, they seemed more like both barrels of a 12-gauge shotgun going off. The seismologists back on Earth were pleased, but the job of the astronauts had not been an easy one. As Shepard later wrote: "It was quite a trick to take the Moon's pulse when you're on another world." They also set up a mortar unit that was to lob grenade-like charges several hundred metres after the crew had left the Moon to extend the seismic survey, but it was never actually used.

Pictured toward the end of one of their Moonwalks, this view captures the desolation of the Fra Mauro site. Photo Credit: NASA

Enabling them to transport a wide range of equipment—including cameras and lenses, sample bags, trenching tools, tongs, scoops, core tubes, hammers, brushes, maps, and a gnomon to be placed next to samples in order to indicate vertical and the illumination conditions—across the hilly terrain was the 18-pound (8.2-kg) MET, a sort of two-wheeled, two-legged caddy which the astronauts pulled along by hand. Despite a number of puns from jokers that it would enable "Old Man Shepard" to take a breather when he got tired, it was capable of holding 350 pounds (160 kg) of equipment, but would only be used on this single mission. It tended to become bogged down in lunar dust, which seemed somewhat thicker and deeper than the soils encountered by Apollos 11 and 12. It was like dragging a golf buggy through deep sand. Moreover, being lightweight, it tended to bounce in the low lunar gravity and one man had to follow on behind to pick up items that fell.

A common misconception over the years was that the MET was scheduled to have been aboard Jim Lovell's ill-fated Apollo 13 mission to Fra Mauro. This was not, in fact, the case. Originally, the MET was manifested on Apollos 14-16, after which the final flights (17-20) would carry the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). When Apollos 18-20 were scrubbed during 1970, the remaining missions were retasked: LRVs were reassigned to Apollos 15-17, and Shepard's flight wound up as the only expedition to feature the MET.

In between tugging the MET, they found that the easiest form of locomotion was a sort of one-two, one-two, one-two gait, akin to a horse's trot, rather than the standard left-right moves of a jogger. With every step, they involuntarily kicked up clouds of lunar dust, whose consistency they likened to talcum powder, and this quickly clung to their boots and worked its way up their legs. Ahead of them, the harsh glare of lunar sunlight made shadows unreliable, distance difficult to judge, and, with no visible points of reference, craters seemed to appear at their feet, as if from nowhere. Boulders which looked to be some way off were suddenly within spitting distance. Unlike Earth-based walking, they had to "plan" each step four or five steps in advance. It was, said Shepard, like trying to find one's way across the featureless expanse of the Sahara Desert.

Four hours and 47 minutes after the last wisps of air had been vented from Antares, the two men lugged the last of their rock and soil samples inside the lander and repressurized the cabin. Their sleep that night was far from comfortable, particularly since Shepard had set the lander down with one footpad in a shallow crater, meaning their whole point of reference was noticeably tilted to one side. Within the darkened cabin, shades having been put up against the triangular windows and the small rendezvous window in the roof, the sensation was one of silent, eerie stillness in the desolate landscape of Fra Mauro. With his burgeoning interest in psychic phenomena, it is not surprising that Mitchell acutely sensed the spiritual weight of being the only two living creatures on this otherwise lifeless world. Every so often, he rose from his hammock to lift the shades and gaze outside at the desolate, alien scene.

The Fra Mauro landing site, as viewed from Ed Mitchell's window on the right-hand side of Antares' cabin. Photo Credit: NASA

On more than one occasion, both men were also awakened from their light slumbers by the mild groaning of Antares' systems, the rustling of its paper-thin walls and the gentle hiss of its life-support machinery; Shepard even wondered if the lander was tipping over. One conversation between them is particularly comical:

"Ed? Did you hear that?" Shepard whispered.

"Hell, yes, I heard that."

"What the hell was that?"

"I don't know."

A few seconds passed. Then:

"Ed?"

"What?"

"Why the hell are we whispering?"

By 3:30 a.m. EST on 6 February, they were back outside, loading the MET with their tools to begin the traverse to Cone Crater, from where it was expected they would photograph the interior and gather samples from the rim. Perhaps, lunar geologists hoped, those samples would reveal clues about the Imbrium impact.

Ed Mitchell works with the MET, surrounded by the barren desolation of the Fra Mauro landing site. Photo Credit: NASA

The hike across the hummocky terrain proved tougher than anticipated. With Shepard pulling the MET and Mitchell studying the map, it became clear after an hour that the rim of Cone Crater was farther away than expected. "Checkpoint" craters which seemed obvious on the map were now hard to find, and the whole region seemed like an endless "sea" of sand dunes, with yawning depressions, perhaps 16 feet (five meters) deep, everywhere. "That next crater," they would think, "ought to be 330 feet (100 meters) away" … but invariably, it was nowhere to be found. Sometimes, Shepard later wrote, they "would appear to walk along flat ground when their legs disappeared and reappeared, like small ships on a heaving sea. In reality, they strode through great shallows in the plains of Fra Mauro."

With difficulty, they found their first sampling stop, then their second, and managed to linger for just a few minutes to grab some rock and soil specimens, take a few photographs, and acquire readings with their portable magnetometer. Then it was time to tackle the ridge itself. Here, Shepard and Mitchell found surer, firmer footing, but as they threaded their way upward the presence of rocks everywhere slowed their progress considerably. Whenever the MET hit a rock it jumped up off the ground, and the astronauts were concerned that it might topple over. At length, Shepard grabbed it, and the two men carried it.

Watching from Mission Control, in addition to Capcom Fred Haise—who had trained to perform just this traverse as the lunar module pilot of Apollo 13—were the backup landing team of Gene Cernan and Joe Engle. Before launch, they had bet Shepard and Mitchell a case of scotch that they would be unable to make it up the ridge whilst dragging the bulky MET behind them.

"There are two guys sitting next to me who kinda figured you'd end up carrying it up," Haise observed.

Yet the climb was difficult and their bulky space suits fought their every move. Every so often, Shepard and Mitchell paused for a breather and took time to look back down the slopes toward Antares; clearly visible in the slanting lunar sunlight were the tracks from the MET's two rubber wheels, interspersed with their own bootprints. It was becoming increasingly clear, though, that they were still far from their objective. The lack of reliable landmarks and the unreal clarity of the scene made it impossible to determine exactly where they were; at one stage, convinced that they were approaching the rim of Cone Crater, both men were disappointed that they had only crested an inflection in the flank of the ridge, and that their climb was not yet over. After the mission, they would liken the optically illusive effect to looking at a mountain in clear air conditions on Earth; although a peak might seem to be quite close, in reality it was some distance away.

Unbeknownst to Shepard and Mitchell, they actually got to within 66 feet (20 meters) of the rim of Cone Crater. Photo Credit: NASA

Many of the geologists listening to Shepard and Mitchell's efforts were not surprised that they were having trouble navigating their way around. It was one thing to recognize a lunar feature from orbit, but something quite different to view it on the surface. The climb was steadily taking it out of the astronauts—at one point, Shepard's heart rate reached 150 beats per minute—and the flight surgeon asked for a pause, then queried the geologists: How important was it to reach the rim of Cone Crater? From the perspective of better understanding the Moon's early history, it was important, but not vital. It was believed that rocks near the crater's edge would yield some of the deepest and oldest material. In effect, the crater was a drill hole that would enable them to sample material that was otherwise deeply buried. By finding such material, Shepard and Mitchell would be travelling back in time, to only a few hundred million years after the Moon's formation.

The men's thoughts seemed to be diverging at this stage, more than an hour into the traverse, with Shepard keen to gather samples where they were at that time and then turn back, and Mitchell eager to press on. Mitchell felt that the mission would be a failure if they did not reach the rim of Cone Crater, if only to have the awe-inspiring opportunity to look into its 1,000-foot (300-meter) bowl. On the other hand, geologists doubted that they would see anything of significance, because photographs from orbit showed no signs of exposed layering or other significant structural features. The message to call a halt was passed to Fred Haise. They should, he told Shepard and Mitchell, consider where they were to be the edge of the crater.

Mitchell was bitterly disappointed. "Think you're finks!" he said. However, Haise gave them some good news: If they thought that they could reach the rim soon, they could press on a little further. Shepard decided to give it a shot. On and on they climbed, again stopping for a breather a few minutes past 5 a.m. EST, gazing in bewilderment at the enormous boulders all around them, ejected by the impact which formed Cone Crater. From Mission Control, Deke Slayton offered to cover Cernan and Engle's bet if they left the MET and carried on without it. Much as Shepard and Mitchell appreciated the thought, neither of them wanted to leave their stash of geology tools behind. As far as they knew, they might be almost at the rim.

Another breather. Both men were drenched in perspiration, gulping intakes of oxygen, and the internal temperatures of their suits were rising dramatically. The search was proving fruitless. At length, Shepard radioed: "We're right in the middle of the boulder field on the west rim. We haven't quite reached the rim yet." Mitchell took this as an admission that the search was over. In fact, both astronauts believed themselves to be at different places: Shepard thought they were close to the crater's western edge, but Mitchell was sure that they were somewhere to the south. If they headed north, Mitchell argued, they would reach the rim. They continued walking and, studying his map, Mitchell was convinced that they should be able to see a prominent boulder. They could not … and by this point, nearly two hours since leaving Antares, they were running out of time. Haise told them to stop searching for the crater and begin taking samples.

In this televised image, Al Shepard becomes the first person to play golf on another world. Photo Credit: NASA

The return downhill toward the lander, though disappointing, was exhilarating and both men could take full advantage of one-sixth terrestrial gravity, bounding in wide, slow-motion jumps. Back at the LM, they loaded the rock and soil boxes—totalling 99 pounds (45 kg) of lunar material—inside and took a few moments to catch a last glimpse of Fra Mauro. Before returning inside, Shepard took one final chance to have a spot of fun on the Moon, taking a golf ball from his pocket and dropping it onto the surface. (He had gotten the idea when he showed comedian Bob Hope around Mission Control a few months earlier.) "Houston," he radioed, "I have in my hand the handle for the contingency sample return and just so happens I have a genuine six-iron on the bottom of it. In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that's familiar to millions of Americans. I drop it down."

Unfortunately, with the stiffness of the suit, Shepard could only operate one-handed and his first swipe missed totally. Mitchell told him that he got more dirt than ball. A second swipe shanked the ball and sent it into a pathetic dribble. He dropped a second ball into the dust. This time, he was more successful, and the ball sailed in impossibly slow motion into the distance. "Miles and miles!" he cried. In truth, it flew a few hundred feet. Before launch, he had told Deke Slayton, who made him promise only to do it if everything else was going well, but Mitchell had not been made privy to the caper.

In fact, Shepard had sneaked out of crew quarters on a number of occasions, donned his suit, and practiced his swing. The last thing he wanted, with a worldwide audience tuning in, was to fall flat on his face. …

By the time Antares' cabin was repressurized, the second Moonwalk had lasted four hours and 35 minutes, bringing the Apollo 14 experience to over nine hours. Subsequent analysis of Shepard and Mitchell's photographs, correlated with images from orbit, would show that they came within 66 feet (20 meters) or so of the rim of Cone Crater. In fact, a large saddle-shaped rock they had sampled was on Mitchell's map! A few steps farther north, and they would have seen the pit of Cone Crater open up before them! Less than eight hours later, Antares' ascent stage was barreling its way back into orbit in order to rejoin Kitty Hawk.

Apollo 14 concludes humanity's third manned lunar landing with a perfect splashdown on 9 February 1971, 43 years ago today. Photo Credit: NASA

During his time alone aboard the command module Kitty Hawk, their crewmate Stu Roosa had undertaken much of the detailed observation work originally planned for Apollo 13. Key to this effort was the huge Hycon Lunar Topographic Camera, which he had installed in the command module's hatch window. The device, with its motorized film transport, exposure controls, and timer, was capable of resolving surface features just a couple of metres across, although it had proven somewhat sluggish to get up and running. It took 140 frames, then began making peculiar clanking noises. Roosa unplugged its cables and reconnected them, to no avail, and despite troubleshooting advice from Houston, he ran out of time and had to press on with other work.

Docking at 3:35 p.m. EST was followed by the sound of Shepard knocking from his side of the hatch. "Who's there?" asked Roosa, before admitting them. A perfect SPS burn later that day set them on course for home. The return journey was a calm one, although a few experiments were performed in electrophoresis, liquid transfer between containers, heat transfer, and the casting of materials from a molten state. Kitty Hawk splashed down in the South Pacific, within view of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. New Orleans at 4:05 p.m. EST on 9 February 1971, exactly 43 years ago today.

With the exception of narrowly missing the rim of Cone Crater and the close shaves during the journey to the Moon, Apollo 14 had proven hugely successful. In the eyes of the space workforce, Shepard, Roosa, and Mitchell had saved the lunar program and recovered from the ordeal that had befallen Jim Lovell's crew. Yet the public at large still seemed peculiarly disenchanted by the prospects of further Moon landings. Only three more expeditions remained on NASA's books, although those were expected to be the grandest of all. All three would be designated as "J-series" lunar voyages and would spend three days on the surface, feature three Moonwalks as long as seven hours apiece and conduct advanced scientific research from orbit.

 

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