Төртінші адамды Айға қондыру миссиясы

Fourth crewed Moon landing

The mission accomplished its goals but was marred by negative publicity the following year when it emerged that the crew had carried unauthorized postal covers to the lunar surface, some of which were sold by a West German stamp dealer. The members of the crew were reprimanded for poor judgment, and did not fly in space again. The mission also saw the collection of the Genesis Rock, thought to be part of the Moon's early crust, and Scott's use of a hammer and a feather to validate Galileo's theory that when there is no air resistance, objects fall at the same rate due to gravity regardless of their mass.

In 1962, NASA contracted for the construction of fifteen Saturn V rockets to achieve the Apollo program's goal of a crewed landing on the Moon by 1970; at the time no one knew how many missions this would require. Since success was obtained in 1969 with the sixth SaturnV on Apollo 11, nine rockets remained available for a hoped for total of ten landings. These plans included a heavier, extended version of the Apollo spacecraft to be used in the last five missions (Apollo 16 through 20). The revamped lunar module would be capable of up to a 75 hour stay, and would carry a Lunar Roving Vehicle to the Moon's surface. The service module would house a package of orbital experiments to gather data on the Moon. In the original plan Apollo 15 was to be the last of the non extended missions to land in Censorinus crater. But in anticipation of budget cuts, NASA cancelled three landing missions by September 1970. Apollo 15 became the first of three extended missions, known as J missions, and the landing site was moved to Hadley Rille, originally planned for Apollo 19.