Video: 'Apollo 14 CBS' (72 videos; Apollo 14 splashdowns on video #50 at 10:17)

(Tuesday, February 9, 1971, 4:05 p.m. EST/21:05:00 UTC) — The Apollo 14 astronauts rode their spaceship to a safe, successful and precise splashdown in the Pacific Ocean today, marking the end of the nation’s 24th manned space flight, the sixth mission to the moon and the third to have landed men who explored that desolate world some 238,000 miles from the earth.

Less than an hour after splashdown, Capt. Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Comdr. Edgar D. Mitchell of the Navy and Maj. Stuart A. Roosa of the Air Force stepped aboard the USS New Orleans, a helicopter carrier.

They had hit the water four miles from the ship and less than a mile from their aiming point about 900 miles south of American Samoa.