Apollo 14
Rocks thrown out by the giant impact that made the Imbrium basin.
Key facts
- Agency
- NASA (United States)
- Type of mission
- Crewed landing and sample return
- Target
- The Moon: Fra Mauro highlands
- Launched
- 31 January 1971
- Samples returned
- 42.3 kg of rock and soil
- Status
- Completed 1971
Apollo 14 landed on 5 February 1971 in the Fra Mauro hills, the target that Apollo 13 never reached. Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell made two moonwalks, pulling a two-wheeled cart to carry tools and samples, and collected 42.3 kilograms of material.
What the rocks showed
The Fra Mauro region is covered by a blanket of debris thrown out when a huge asteroid struck the Moon and dug out the Imbrium basin, more than 1,000 kilometres across. Most Apollo 14 rocks are therefore breccias: rocks made of broken fragments welded together by the heat and pressure of impacts, often several times over.
Dating these breccias helped fix the age of the Imbrium impact at about 3.9 billion years. Together with ages from other Apollo sites, it suggested that many of the Moon's great basins formed in a relatively short burst, an idea called the Late Heavy Bombardment. That idea is still debated, and lunar meteorites, which come from random places on the Moon, are now an important test of it.
Many Apollo 14 rocks are rich in KREEP, the material first identified in the Apollo 12 soil.
Big Bertha
The largest rock collected, a breccia of about 9 kilograms nicknamed Big Bertha, contains a small fragment that some scientists think may have been thrown off Earth by an impact four billion years ago and landed on the Moon. If so, it would be a terrestrial meteorite on the Moon.
Key dates
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 31 January 1971 | Apollo 14 launched. |
| 5 February 1971 | Shepard and Mitchell landed in the Fra Mauro highlands. |
| 9 February 1971 | The crew splashed down with 42.3 kg of samples. |
See where this mission fits among all the others in the mission timeline.
Did you know?
Alan Shepard, the first American in space, hit two golf balls on the Moon during this mission.
A fragment in the rock Big Bertha may be a piece of very early Earth that landed on the Moon.