Questions about Apollo 15
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What was Apollo 15 and why was it significant?
Apollo 15 was the fourth crewed Moon landing and the ninth crewed mission in the Apollo program, launching on the 26th of July 1971 and returning on the 7th of August 1971. It was the first J mission, meaning it carried a Lunar Roving Vehicle, featured a longer surface stay, and placed greater emphasis on science than earlier landings. It also included the first spacewalk in deep space, performed by Alfred Worden roughly 171,000 nautical miles from Earth.
Who were the crew members of Apollo 15?
The Apollo 15 crew consisted of Commander David Scott, Command Module Pilot Alfred Worden, and Lunar Module Pilot James Irwin. Scott and Worden were both born in 1932 and had attended West Point; Irwin was born in 1930 in Pittsburgh and attended the United States Naval Academy. All three had ties to the University of Michigan, which was the first university in the United States to offer an aeronautical engineering program.
What is the Genesis Rock found by Apollo 15?
The Genesis Rock is an anorthosite sample collected by David Scott and James Irwin at Spur crater on the slope of Mons Hadley Delta during their second moonwalk on the 1st of August 1971. It is believed to be part of the early lunar crust, and finding such a specimen was one of the scientific reasons the Hadley Rille area had been chosen as the landing site. The rock proved to be among the most scientifically valuable samples returned from the Moon.
What was the Apollo 15 postal cover controversy?
Before the mission, the Apollo 15 crew carried roughly 400 unauthorized postal covers to the Moon in exchange for about $7,000 each, arranged through intermediary Walter Eiermann and West German stamp dealer Hermann Sieger. After the mission, 100 covers were sold to Sieger's customers at roughly $1,500 each. In April 1972, Deke Slayton discovered the arrangement, removed the crew from the Apollo 17 backup roster, and in June 1972 all three astronauts were publicly reprimanded for poor judgment. None of them flew in space again.
What was the Fallen Astronaut left on the Moon by Apollo 15?
Fallen Astronaut is a small aluminum statuette that Commander David Scott placed on the lunar surface during the third EVA, along with a plaque listing 14 American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in the pursuit of space exploration. Scott turned the television camera away while placing it and only disclosed the memorial at a post-flight press conference. A dispute later arose over whether the figurine had been made by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck, as Scott testified in 1972, or by NASA personnel, as Scott claimed in a 2021 document.
What did Alfred Worden do alone while orbiting the Moon on Apollo 15?
While Scott and Irwin were on the surface, Worden operated scientific instruments in the service module's SIM bay, including a panoramic camera, a gamma-ray spectrometer, an X-ray spectrometer, a laser altimeter, a metric camera, and a mass spectrometer. He also took photographs and described lunar features for scientists on Earth. Data from the X-ray spectrometer revealed that the lunar highlands are richer in aluminum than the mares. On the return journey, on August 5, Worden performed a 39-minute spacewalk to retrieve film cassettes from the SIM bay, the first deep-space EVA in history.