50 Years Ago: Four Weeks Until Apollo 14

As 1971 opened, preparations continued for the Jan. 31 launch of Apollo 14. In December 1970, engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center completed a major milestone to ready the spacecraft and its Saturn V rocket for the Moon-landing mission while senior NASA managers met to assess the readiness of all aspects for the flight. The Apollo 14 prime crew of Commander Alan B. Shepard, Command Module Pilot Stuart A. Roosa, and Lunar Module Pilot Edgar D. Mitchell, along with backups Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, and Joe H. Engle, rehearsed various phases of their flight. The prime crew held a press conference to describe the goals of the mission, including the landing in the Moon’s Fra Mauro highlands. Preparations also continued for Apollo 15, the first of final three Moon-landing missions with a greater emphasis on science.

Left: The Apollo 14 Saturn V rocket on Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Credits: J.L. Pickering. Right: Controllers in Kennedy’s Launch Control Center during the Apollo 14 Flight Readiness Test. Credits: NASA

At Kennedy’s Launch Pad 39A, following completion of the Integrated Systems Test on Dec. 13, engineers electrically mated the Apollo spacecraft to its Saturn V rocket. From Dec. 17-18, workers completed the Flight Readiness Test (FRT) to ensure that all spacecraft and booster systems functioned as needed during the actual mission. The FRT included the checkout of all vehicles, as if for flight, with the exception of fueling the rocket. That phase of testing occurred during the Countdown Demonstration Test (CDDT) in mid-January 1971.

On the same days as the FRT, senior managers from NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the directors of Kennedy, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, now NASA’s Johnson Space Center, met for the Flight Readiness Review to assess the status of all components of the Apollo 14 mission. At the end of the review, the managers agreed to proceed to the CDDT and, if that test revealed no issues, to the Jan. 31 launch itself.

On Dec. 31, NASA announced a modified plan for the return of Shepard, Roosa, and Mitchell to Houston following their splashdown in the southern Pacific Ocean. In the original plan, and as carried out after Apollo 11 and 12, the astronauts were to stay inside a Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF) aboard the prime recovery ship USS New Orleans (LPH-11) as it sailed to Honolulu — and then transfer to a transport plane for the flight back to Houston. To shorten the return trip by five or six days, the astronauts would exit the MQF aboard the New Orleans and be flown by helicopter to American Samoa, where they would enter a second MQF aboard a C-141 transport plane for the flight back to Houston to complete their 21-day quarantine inside the MSC’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory. 

Left: Apollo 14 Commander Alan B. Shepard stands in front of the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston. Right: Shepard flies the LLTV. Credits: NASA

As their launch date approached, the Apollo 14 astronauts neared completion of their preflight training. Shepard and Cernan flew the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle at Ellington Air Force Base, near MSC, to practice the final several hundred feet of the descent to the lunar surface, completing their final flights on Jan. 5. The moonwalkers finished training for the surface excursions, including the deployment of the scientific experiments, and received their final geology briefings. All the astronauts spent many hours in the spacecraft simulators, rehearsing various aspects of the flight, with controllers in the Mission Control Center at MSC participating in selected simulations to hone their skills. Flight directors M.P. “Pete” Frank, Milton L. “Milt” Windler, Gerald D. “Gerry” Griffin, and Glynn S. Lunney led the teams of controllers during the simulations and the actual Apollo 14 mission.

Left: Apollo 14 backup Commander Eugene A. Cernan practices deploying the Modular Equipment Transporter during a spacewalk training session. Right: Apollo 14 flight directors, from left, M.P. “Pete” Frank, Milton L. “Milt” Windler, Gerald D. “Gerry” Griffin, and Glynn S. Lunney in the Mission Control Center. Credits: NASA

Left: Apollo 14 astronauts Shepard, left, Stuart A. Roosa, and Edgar D. Mitchell during the preflight crew press conference at the MSC in Houston. Right: Shepard, left, Roosa, and Mitchell demonstrate the docking maneuver to the press. Credits: NASA

On Jan. 9, Shepard, Roosa, and Mitchell held a press conference in MSC’s main auditorium. The astronauts announced that they chose the call signs Antares for their Lunar Module (LM) and Kitty Hawk for the Command and Service Module (CSM). They reviewed plans for their upcoming mission to Fra Mauro, including the two surface excursions to be conducted by Shepard and Mitchell during their 33 hours on the Moon, and the science that Roosa would conduct while remaining in lunar orbit in the CSM. Shepard and Mitchell described the use of a golf-cart like vehicle, called the Modular Equipment Transporter, to help them carry their tools and samples during the spacewalks. In addition to the still photography and TV cameras carried on previous Moon-landing missions, the Apollo 14 crew also documented their surface excursions with a motion-picture camera. When asked about the modifications made to the CSM as a result of the Apollo 13 oxygen tank explosion, Roosa commented that “certainly we have a better spacecraft now. I’d say, without a doubt, it is more safe.”

Left: Apollo 15 astronauts James B. Irwin, left, and David R. Scott with the Lunar Roving Vehicle 1-g trainer, practicing their lunar surface activities. Right: Apollo 2TV-2 spacecraft with experiments installed in the Service Module’s Scientific Instrument Module for thermo-vacuum testing in the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory. Credits: NASA

Even as the launch for Apollo 14 approached, preparations continued for Apollo 15, the first of the three final Moon-landing missions, with a greater emphasis on science than previous flights. Improvements to the LM allowed for three-day stays on the lunar surface, with the astronauts conducting three spacewalks of up to seven hours each.

NASA contracted with the Boeing Co. to develop a Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), allowing the astronauts to travel greater distances in search of geologically interesting sites. Boeing delivered the 1-g LRV trainer to the MSC on Dec. 16. Engineers modified the astronauts’ Extravehicular Mobility Units, or spacesuits, to enable the longer spacewalks.

Science from lunar orbit also gained a boost with the addition of the Scientific Instrument Module bay (SIM-bay) to the Service Module, containing instruments to photograph the lunar surface and study the lunar environment, including a particles and fields sub-satellite that would eject from the spacecraft before it left lunar orbit for the trip back to Earth. Engineers in MSC’s Space Environment Simulation Laboratory tested an Apollo spacecraft, designated 2TV-2, used in an earlier configuration in 1968 to verify the thermal and vacuum characteristics of the CSM, to evaluate the ability of the SIM-bay experiment hardware to withstand the temperature extremes of the space environment.

To be continued …

World events in January 1971:

• Jan. 1 – The United States bans cigarette ads on television.
• Jan. 12 – “All in the Family” premieres on CBS-TV.
• Jan. 12 – Congressional Black Caucus organizes in the U.S. Congress.
• Jan. 15 – The Aswan Dam opens in Egypt.
• Jan. 15 – George Harrison releases the single “My Sweet Lord” in the United Kingdom.
• Jan. 20 – Marvin Gaye releases the single “What’s Going On.”
• Jan. 25 – Charles Manson and three women followers are convicted in the Tate-LaBianca murders.
• Jan. 25 – Idi Amin seizes power in Uganda through a military coup.