Apollo 15 — Hadley–Apennine

The first car on the Moon, landed at the foot of mountains

In 1971 the Apollo 15 astronauts brought the first car to the Moon — the lunar rover! It folded up, ran on electricity and drove at 13 km/h. They spent 3 days beside 4 km mountains and the deep Hadley Rille. Astronaut David Scott did an experiment on camera: he dropped a falcon feather and a hammer together — and they landed at the same time, because there is no air on the Moon!

Apollo 15 (30 July – 2 August 1971) was the first extended 'J-type' science mission: a lunar rover (LRV, 28 km driven), 3 moonwalks (18.5 hours), 77 kg of samples. The landing site sits at the edge of the Sea of Rains between the Apennine Mountains (Hadley Delta, 3.5 km) and Hadley Rille (a lava channel 1.2 km wide and 300 m deep). David Scott and James Irwin found the 'Genesis Rock' — a 4.1-billion-year-old anorthosite, a sample of the Moon's primordial crust. Scott's feather-and-hammer experiment proved Galileo's law of free fall before the whole world. In orbit, Alfred Worden released a small satellite from the service module.

Fun facts

• The lunar rover is still parked there — they took the keys!
• The Genesis Rock is older than any rock on Earth.
• Apollo 15 carried over 300 postal covers to the Moon — which later caused a scandal.