Apollo 15
Mission: Apollo 15
Apollo 15 was launched on July 26, 1971, with Colonel Scott as flight commander,
Lieutenant Colonel James B. Irwin as pilot of the LM, and Major Alfred M. Worden as
pilot of the command module, all officers of the air force. Scott and Irwin spent 2 days, 18
hours on the lunar surface at the edge of Mare Imbrium, close to the 366-m (1200-ft) deep
Hadley Rille and the Apennine mountain range, one of the highest on the moon. During
their 18 hours, 37 minutes of exploration of the lunar surface, the astronauts traversed
more than 28.2 km (17.5 mi) in the vicinity of Mount Hadley in an electrically propelled
four-wheeled lunar rover. They also deployed an elaborate package of scientific
instruments and collected about 91 kg (about 200 lb) of rocks, including what was believed
to be a sample of anorthosite, a crystalline piece of the original lunar crust, about 4.6 billion
years old. A television camera left on the moon photographed Scott and Irwin's departure
from the surface, and before the crew left the lunar orbit for their return to earth, they
launched into lunar orbit a 35.6-kg (78.5-lb) "subsatellite" designed to transmit data about
gravitational, magnetic, and high-energy fields in the lunar environment. On the return
journey, Worden made a 16-minute walk in deep space while the spacecraft was about
315,400 km (196,000 mi) from the earth, a record distance. The Apollo 15 astronauts
splashed down without incident on August 7, about 530 km (about 330 mi) north of
Hawaii, and were the first moon-landing crew that was not required to undergo a quarantine.
Apollo 15 Patch
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