On July 31, 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts James B. Irwin and Commander David Scott first used the Lunar Roving Vehicle to explore the moon’s surface. The LRV was designed to operate in low gravity, making it easier for the astronauts to maneuver.
Apollo 15 was the fourth US space mission to land on the moon. The mission didn’t last long—it began on July 26 and ended on Aug. 7. The actual lunar surface exploration took just a few days, from July 30 to Aug. 2. And Scott and Irwin spent less than a day on the moon’s surface—just 18 hours and 37 minutes.
Still, Apollo 15 set new records for crewed spaceflight, including the maximum radial distance traveled on the lunar surface away from a spacecraft (17.5 miles). It was also the longest time in lunar orbit (about 145 hours), the longest crewed lunar mission (295 hours), and the longest Apollo mission (295 hours).
The Apollo missions were before my time. But I still appreciate their goals—including achieving preeminence in space for the US—and what it meant to the country. Our collective fascination with space was in full swing by the time I was a kid; I remember having a glow-in-the-dark poster of the solar system in my room. I thought for a bit that I might…
