Apollo 14
February 5, 1971
Alan Shepard landed on the Moon today. The first American in space — Freedom 7, fifteen minutes, May 1961 — landed on another world at Fra Mauro. He is forty-seven years old. He waited ten years for this. His first words on the surface: "It's been a long way, but…
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February 5, 1971
Alan Shepard walked on the Moon today. The first American in space, fifteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds in 1961, just hit a golf ball on the lunar surface.
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November 20, 1970
The Fra Mauro samples from Apollo 14 are being analyzed. The formation turns out to be exactly what the geologists hoped: Imbrium basin ejecta, telling us about the giant impact.
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Apollo 13
April 11, 1970
Apollo 13 launched today and the newspapers barely mentioned it. "Routine Moon mission," one headline said. Routine! I watched from home and felt obscurely offended on behalf of the crew. Three men are riding a Saturn V to another world. Nothing about this is routine. We've forgotten how hard this…
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