Astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell spent a total of 33 and a half hours on
the Moon, performing two 'Moonwalks' during their stay. Fifty years
later, data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter recreate what it was like to walk across the lunar surface during one of their mile-long hikes — and a critical mistake.NASA released the video Monday, recreating the Apollo 14 astronauts'
two-and-a-half-hour hike across the Moon. But the historic walk came
with a surprise ending: The two astronauts missed their true
destination.Watch the video in full:
This image shows the path taken by the Apollo 14 astronauts on the Moon and the location of Cone Crater.NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/The Ohio State Universit As
the video shows, Shepard and Mitchell began their hike to the crater on
track, walking across the lunar surface for two and a half hours. They
followed a path which took them over a fairly steep hill up to the rim
of the crater, as illustrated in the video. As they walked, the
astronauts also had to drag around a two-wheeled transporter to carry
their equipment. During their time spent on the Moon, astronauts Shepard
and Mitchell collected 94 pounds of rocks and soil for return to Earth.
But as the trail continued, the rim of the Cone Crater became obscured, slipping out of the astronauts' view. The pair were eventually advised by mission control to return back to the lunar module, for fear they would get lost. Before they turned back, however, they collected lunar samples from an area located close to the crater.
Very, very close, in fact.
Incredibly, Shepard and Mitchell were just 150 feet away from their destination of Cone Crater at the time they gave up on finding it.
Despite this seeming failure, the Apollo 14 astronauts set a new record for total amount of time spent on the lunar surface. Altogether, they spent nine hours and 24 minutes on the Moon outside of their spacecraft. During that time, they traveled a record-breaking distance of 9,000 feet on the Moon.
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