Apollo 15: a scientific and technical peak

The last three Apollo missions (18, 19 & 20) were cancelled. The crew of the next Apollo mission were Dave Scott, Alfred Worden and James Irwin. Lindsay:

Originally planned as the last of the simpler “H” missions, with only two excursions and no vehicular rover, the cancellation of the last three Apollo lunar landings made NASA anxious to make the most of the remaining missions, so the more comprehensive scientific “J” missions were brought forward to Apollo 15. The Apollo 13 mishap introduced a convenient delay in the program to help incorporate the hardware changes, as the “J” missions were designed to use the Apollo system capabilities to the limit, and to change the role of the astronauts from test pilots to explorers, preferably scientific explorers.

The lunar module was fitted with larger fuel tanks, extra batteries, and a bigger descent engine thrust and bell housing to carry the extra weight of the lunar rover and its gear. The trajectory engineers revised their procedures to accommodate the steeper descent path over the Apennine Mountains.

At the NASA station in Honeysuckle Creek, Australia, Operations Supervisor John Saxon remembered:

“We almost completely rebuilt the station between Apollo 14 and Apollo 15, working masses of overtime – so much so that some staff members begged for a break. The difference between 14 and 15 was almost like a new project. There were a whole new lot of communications with scientific experiments in the Service Module, there was a Particle and Fields sub‑satellite which was ejected from the Service Module into orbit around the Moon, there was a lunar rover vehicle which they drove around on the surface of the Moon. The communications were becoming horrendous – there were so many links involved – back packs of the astronauts, the relay from the lunar rover, the Lunar Module, the Particle and Fields Satellite… we went into the mission not sure we could handle all this.

“Again we had the lion’s share of that mission – we had all the walks on the surface of the Moon, all the bringing up of the first lunar rover down link to the ground – all the critical parts of that mission we were prime. Although we went into the mission with quite a bit of trepidation, it was quite amazing, it all went by the book – it was perfect. Apollo 15 was the scientific and technical peak of our operation as far as I was concerned.”