Apollo 15
August 2, 1971
At the end of the final moonwalk, Dave Scott held a geological hammer and a falcon feather — the mascot of the Air Force Academy, where Scott studied — and dropped them together. In the vacuum of the Moon, they hit the surface simultaneously. Galileo was right. I watched on…
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Apollo 15
August 1, 1971
Dave Scott and Jim Irwin may have found the most important rock ever collected — an anorthosite fragment they're calling the Genesis Rock, estimated to be 4 billion years old. It's a piece of the original lunar crust, from when the Moon was still forming. I've been a space program…
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Apollo 15
July 31, 1971
Dave Scott drove the Lunar Rover on the Moon today and the television camera on the rover broadcast it live. I watched the Moon scroll past — the mountains, the craters, the edge of Hadley Rille — from my living room. Scott's voice narrating the drive. I will never get…
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Apollo 15
July 26, 1971
Apollo 15 launched today and Dave Scott is going to drive a car on the Moon. The Lunar Roving Vehicle — four wheels, electric motor, built by Boeing — will be folded in the descent stage and deployed on the surface. I've been looking forward to this mission more than…
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Gemini
March 17, 1966
The Gemini 8 mission nearly ended in catastrophe yesterday. Neil Armstrong and David Scott were in an uncontrolled spin — one revolution per second — when Armstrong managed to use the reentry thrusters to stop the tumbling. They had to abort the mission. Armstrong is home. But reading the account…
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Gemini Program
March 16, 1966
Neil Armstrong docked with the Agena target vehicle today — the first docking in space — and then had to cut the mission short when Gemini 8 started spinning.
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