Shepard • Roosa • Mitchell

Shepard . Roosa . Mitchell. Launched: January 31, 1971 . Landed: February 5, 1971 . Splashdown: February 9, 1971. Alan Shepard's first words on the Moon - ten years after he made history as the first American in space., Less than a year after the "successful failure" of Apollo 13, the mission of Apollo 14 accomplished much of what its predecessor had hoped to do. Thanks to a new piece of equipment, a two-wheeled push cart ("modular equipment transporter") for carrying tools and instruments, Shepard and Ed Mitchell were able to spend more time exploring the Moon's surface, venture farther from the lunar module, and collect more samples and scientific data than previous missions. And the irrepressible Shepard made history by becoming the first man to swat a golf ball on the Moon. Shepard's flight capped a fruitful relationship with Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center. In 1961, Marshall's Redstone rocket carried him into space, and in 1971 Marshall's Saturn V enabled him to become the only one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts to set foot on the Moon.