1971: Apollo 15 (NASA)

(Wednesday, August 4, 1971) — Apollo 15 tonight fired its main engine behind the moon and blasted out of lunar orbit on the way home to earth just after dropping off a small satellite designed to orbit the moon for at least a year.

1971: Apollo 15 (NASA)

(Tuesday, August 3, 1971) — The Apollo 15 astronauts circled the moon today charting its place in the family of the sun and snapping pictures of the moon’s newest crater created by the crash landing of the lunar landing ship Falcon.

1971: Apollo 15 (NASA)

(Monday, August 2, 1971, 1:11 p.m. ET) — Apollo 15 astronauts David R. Scott and James B. Irwin rocketed from the moon today and linked up with their mother ship, a first step home with a 230-pound cargo of lunar secrets won from that battered vault of space history. The launch followed a third and final walk on the moon where Scott paid tribute to the 16th century Italian scientist Galileo Galilei and his discovery about falling objects in gravity fields.

1971: Apollo 15 (NASA)

(Sunday, August 1, 1971) — Two Apollo 15 explorers radioed jubilantly today from a steep lunar mountainside that “we found what we came for,” a crystal-filled rock believed formed close to the time of the moon’s very creation. Continue reading Spacemen find precious rock at crater →

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnEnaKq57Yg

(Tuesday April 14, 1981, 10:21 a.m. PST) — The first test flight of America’s first operational space shuttle, the Columbia, ended successfully today with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.