Video: 'Apollo 14 CBS' (72 videos; Shepard's first step on the lunar surface on video #12 at 4:30)

(Friday, February 5, 1971, 9:57 a.m. EST/14:57 Coordinated Universal Time) — Two Apollo 14 astronauts walked the gentle slopes of Fra Mauro today, setting up instruments, collecting rocks and probing subsurface reaches in search of clues to the Moon’s earliest history.

While earthbound scientists eagerly watched their every televised step, Capt. Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Comdr. Edgar D. Mitchell of the U.S. Navy, the fifth and sixth humans to walk on the moon, spent more than four and one-half hours outside their landing craft, Antares

The 47-year-old Captain Shepard opened the hatch at 9:49 a.m EST (14:49 UTC) and stepped out on the “porch” at the top of the ladder.

When he dropped the few feet from the bottom rung to the surface at 9:57 a.m. EST (14:57 UTC), Shepard bounced slightly in the one-sixth gravity and radioed: “Al is on the surface, it’s been a long way, but we’re here.”

The astronauts were the first Apollo crew to use the Modular Equipment Transporter (MET), a two-wheeled cart used to carry equipment.

The hatch remained open for 4 hours, 47 minutes, 50 seconds, until 2:29 p.m. EST (19:29 UTC).

Shortly before 3:30 a.m. the next day, Saturday, Feb. 6, 1971, the men began their second moon exploration, which lasted 4 hours, 34 minutes, 41 seconds. Shepard surprised television viewers around the world by driving two golf balls, in the lesser lunar gravity, with a makeshift golf club.

Antares lifted off from the Moon at 1:48:42 pm EST (18:48:42 UTC) on Feb. 6, 1971, to rendezvous with Maj. Stuart A. Roosa of the Air Force, the third crew member, who was piloting Kitty Hawk in a 70-mile-high lunar orbit.