More Moon Landings

The Apollo program continued until 1972. In November 1969, the Apollo 12 mission, crewed by Charles Conrad and Alan Bean, made a second Moon landing. During this mission, the astro – nauts inspected an earlier unmanned probe, Surveyor 3. The subse­quent mission, Apollo 13, nearly ended in dis­aster. On its way to the

О President Richard Nixon visited the Apollo 11 astro­nauts while they were held in quarantine after their return to Earth on July 24, 1969.

Moon, the spacecraft was damaged when an oxygen tank in the command module blew up. This seriously reduced the supply of oxygen and electrical power. The crippled spacecraft flew on around the Moon and headed back to Earth. Astronauts James A. Lovell, Jr., Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert used the little lunar module as their “lifeboat,” making use of its power and oxygen supplies during the three-day return trip. They returned to the command module before making a safe landing.

The last four Apollo missions carried out explorations at different sites. Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin were the first people to explore the Moon riding in a four­wheeled, battery-driven Lunar Rover.

THE LUNAR ROVER

On the last three Apollo landings, American astronauts drove the elec­tric Lunar Rover, or Moon buggy. This remarkable vehicle was steered by a T-shape control stick instead of a steering wheel. Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin found the buggy hard to drive—it took a little time to get used to driving in gravity that is only one-sixth of that on Earth. The Lunar Rover had four – wheel drive to cope with the bumpy Moon surface and a top speed of 7 miles per hour (11 kilometers per hour). When the astronauts returned to Earth, the Moon buggies from the three missions were left behind on the Moon.

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