Apollo 14 - The Moon Landing Series

The mission is to:

1. travel 384,000km around the world (distance from Earth to the Moon), from cache to cache,
2. this Astronaut should, at some point, visit a cache near the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Centre, Houston, TX (United States of America) – this is where Astronauts train,
3. this Astronaut should, at some point, visit a cache near Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Cape Canaveral, FL (United States of America) – this is where the Saturn V launch vehicles (which carried the Apollo vehicles) were launched, and
4. upon reaching the required distance travelled, the Astronaut should “land” in a cache in Adelaide, South Australia for collection by the recovery team.

Since the first manned spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin in April 1961, just 24 humans have flown to the Moon.

The Apollo program was the carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the 1960s and 1970s. The first two human spaceflight programs carried out by NASA, Project Mercury and Project Gemini, paved the way for the development of hardware and procedures needed for the success of the Apollo missions.

Apollo 14 was the third manned spaceflight that saw humans land on the Moon. The three-person crew consisted of:

• Alan B. Shepard Jr. – Commander (1923-1998)

• Edgar D. Mitchell – Lunar Module Pilot (1930 - )

• Stuart A. Roosa – Command Module Pilot (1933 - 1994)

The primary objectives of Apollo 14 were to explore the Fra Mauro region (was to be explored by Apollo 13, but did not land on the surface of the Moon due to an explosion in the Service Module) and deply the Apollo Lunar Surface Scientific Experiments Package. This mission was deemed a success as all astronauts successfully returned to Earth and mission objectives were met.

Mission Statistics:
 

Launch: January 31, 1971; 4:03 pm EDT
Launch Pad 39A, Cape Kennedy, Florida, USA
Duration: 9 days, 2 minutes
Landing: February 9, 1971
Pacific Ocean
Recovery Ship: USS New Orleans