Video: 'Apollo 14 CBS' (72 videos; launch on video #4 at 2:46)

(Sunday, January 31, 1971, 4:03:02 p.m. EST/21:03:02 UTC) — Apollo 14, carrying astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa, blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida today in man’s third attempt to walk on another world — the Moon.

Video: 'Apollo 14 Remastered [4K]'

The first manned lunar mission since the failure of Apollo 13 was almost aborted after “a harrowing two-hour struggle” to dock the command ship with the separately-launched lunar module that would be used to carry Shepard and Mitchell to a lunar landing.

The secure docking was finally achieved but, as a reporter noted afterward “if the two craft had failed to make a firm link-up, all plans for a landing on the moon early next Friday would have been abandoned.”