Apollo 14

Apollo 14 (January 31st 1971 4:03 - February 9th 1971 20:24) is a live mission of the Programme Apollo.

Crew

At the time of this mission, Alan Shepard is the first and only astronauts of the Programme Mercury to be gone on the Moon. It is as the first to be played Golf elsewhere as on Earth.

Its fellow-members were Stuart Roosa (module of order, remained in orbit) and ED Mitchell (pilot of the lunar module Antares ).

The new flight plan relates to an new approach of the Moon, dictated by a broken site, nonflat. The possibility of moving away from the LEM (Lunar Excursion Modulates) and the contribution of a wheelbarrow will facilitate the transport of the material and the harvest of the samples.

For the preceding flights, the capsule-mother had not approached with less than 112 km lunar surface. During Apollo14, the unit Kitty Hawk/Antarès is gone down to 15000 m from surface. Thus Antarès was detached much more close to the ground. The savings in propellent carried out, added 14 seconds with the operational capacity of the LEM, giving the astronauts more time to plane above surface, in the search of a favourable site and also to replace themselves on a lunar orbit if that had been necessary.

Anecdotes

NASA had to face internal criticisms on the choice of the crew and his inexperience. Indeed, only Alan Shepard had already flown, adding up only 15 minutes in space during its suborbital flight Mercury.
the crew was to lead the mission Apollo 13 but preparation lack the persons in charge decided to reverse the order of the missions. Jim Lovell (and his two team-members) was found on the mission which failed to turn to the catastrophe.
the module of order was named Kitty Hawk in reference to the place where the Frères Wright accomplished their first flights.
the crew encountered difficulties to be fastened with the lunar module and to extract it from its housing thanks to the point before module of order. One needed several attempts to manage to lock the two vessels.
Whereas the lunar module, in Orbit around the star selene, was going to begin its descent, the ordering of cancellation was started. At the time of the descent automatically the computer program of LEM would have very cancelled and to make the landing impossible. The engineers benefitted from an additional orbit to develop a modification of the program so that the computer does not hold account about cancellation.
the Radar of lunar landing, essential, functioned only after having cut its power supply then given under tension.

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