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Apollo 14

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Post-flight Developments

Copyright © 2020 by Johannes Kemppanen and W. David Woods All rights reserved.

Last updated 2020-09-22

Crew Recovery and Quarantine

Preliminary Scientific Results of Apollo 14

Mission Anomalies and Troubleshooting

Onwards to the "J" Missions

Crew histories

Apollo 14 Prime crew.

Alan Bartlett "Al" Shepard Jr. (Captain, USN)

Apollo 14 Commander Al Shepard was born in 1923 in East Derry, New Hampshire. He attended the United States Naval Academy from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree. * Shepard died in 1998.

Stuart Allen "Stu" Roosa (Major, USAF)

Apollo 14 Command Module Pilot Stu Roosa was born in Durango, Colorado, in 1933. Roosa died in 1994.

Edgar Dean "Ed" Mitchell, Sc.D.(Commander, USN)

Apollo 14 Lunar Module Pilot *Mitchell retired from NASA and the US Air Force in 1972. Perhaps inspired by the profoundness of his lunar experience, Mitchell concentrated all his energies in his research into the paranormal by setting up the Institute of Noietic Sciences. He authored books on psychic phenomena and continued as a public speaker and personality. Mitchell died in 2016. *

Apollo 14 Backup crew.

Eugene Andrew "Gene" Cernan (Captain, USN)

Apollo 14 Backup Commander Gene Cernan hails from Chicago, Illinois, where he was born in 1934. He became an astronaut in 1963 in the third selection group. He was the Pilot for Gemini IX and backup Pilot for Gemini XII. In the Apollo program, he first served as a Backup LMP for Apollo 7 before serving as the LMP for Apollo 10 - again flying with Tom Stafford, as well as joined by veteran astronaut John W. Young. After serving as the Backup Commander for Apollo 14, he was assigned as the Prime Commander for Apollo 17, and made the final lunar landing in 1972.

Ronald Ellwin "Ron" Evans (Commander USN)

Joe Henry Engle (Lt. Colonel, USAF)

Apollo 14 Backup Lunar Module Pilot Joe H. Engle, from Abilene, Kansas, was born in 1932. During his X-15 flights, three of these passed the Air Force definition of space, which meant that upon his selection as a NASA astronaut in 1966, he had the distinction of being the only astronaut who had already been to space before his astronaut selection. After his assignment as the Apollo 14 backup LMP, he was slated to fly as the prime LMP on Apollo 17. The cancellation of Apollo 18 through 20 created pressure in NASA to fly one of the science astronauts to the Moon before the end of the program, which resulted in Engle being removed from the crew of Apollo 17 and replaced by geologist science astronaut Harrison Schmitt. Engle made a return to spaceplane research with his assignment to the Aproach and Landing Tests for the space shuttle program, where he flew three missions with astronaut Richard Truly. The duo later flew the Columbia during STS-2 in 1981, the second flight in the Shuttle Orbital Test Program, and the first time a reusable spacecraft had returned to space. He commanded space shuttle Discovery during STS-51-I in 1985.

Support crew histories

Fred "Freddo" Haise was born in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1933. After originally dreaming of a journalistic career, he embarked on an aeronautical engineering degree and later become a test pilot before his selection as an astronaut in 1966 as a member of Group 5. During Apollo development, he worked in the design and construction of the Lunar Module at the Grumman Bethpage factory. His first crew assignment was as Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 8, with Commander Neil Armstrong and Command Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin. For Apollo 11, he was the backup LMP to his former crewmate Aldrin, and had received Jim Lovell as his Commander, alongside Bill Anders as the CMP. Almost immediately after the landing of Apollo 11, he began to train or Apollo 13 with Lovell and Ken Mattingly. Fred Haise continued to support the remaining Moon landing missions. He trained as the backup crew Commander for Apollo 16 with Apollo 14 veterans Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell. Haise then moved into the slowly growing space shuttle program. It was Fred Haise who flew the prototype space shuttle Enterprise during three Approach and Landing Tests in 1977, where the Orbiter was released from the back of a Boeing 747 to make a gliding landing that simulated the spacecraft's return to Earth. He was apparently slated to fly an early Shuttle mission to the Skylab to reboost the station into a stable orbit, but Shuttle program delays and the untimely fast demise of Skylab in 1979 cancelled the mission. Haise resigned from NASA and went to work in the aerospace industry.

Joe Engle, Commander, and Richard Truly, Pilot, pose for their STS-3 crew photo.

The two Approach and Landing Test crews pose in front of the prototype Orbiter Enterprise. From the left: Gordon Fullerton, Fred Haise, Joe Engle, Richard Truly.

Gordon Fullerton examines some insect passengers during STS-3.

Skylab crewmembers X and Y test a prototype Manned Maneuvering Unit inside the spaceous Workshop.

With the Apollo winding down, there would be no lunar flight opportunities for Bruce McCandless. He devoted his time for the Skylab program, where he served as a CapCom and a backup crewmember for the first crew. His other major contribution was in the development of

In a picture that is arguably the most well-known space photo not taken on the Moon, Bruce McCandless II becomes the first human satellite to Earth.

On February 3, 1984, the space shuttle Discovery launched on mission STS-41-B with a five-man crew led by Apollo Soyuz Test Flight and STS-5 veteran Vance Brand. Also onboard was Bruce McCandless, an astronaut since 1966, making his first flight after 18 years in the waiting. It was McCandless who strapped on the MMU and took it out on the first untethered spacewalk performed.

Bruce McCandless during STS-31. He was standing by to perform a contingency EVA should trouble arise during the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope.

McCandless' second spaceflight opportunity was no less momentous than his first. STS-31 launched on April 24, 1990, with the Space Shuttle Discovery carrying a 5-person crew and the precious cargo of the long-awaited Hubble Space Telescope. Although the Hubble was to be released using the Canadarm Remote Manipulator System, McCandless and fellow veteran spacewalking pioneer Kathryn Sullivan were prepared to go out on an EVA to assist, should there be trouble with the telescope deployment.

Apollo 14's Docking Probe Flies Again

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project crew posing during training. Deke Slayton, Docking Module Pilot, Valeriy Kubasev, Engineer (USSR), Alexey Leonov, Commander (USSR), Tom Stafford, Commander, Vance Brand, Command Module Pilot.

Extensive testing failed to find anything wrong with the docking probe. The item remained in storage until it was repurposed for use on the very last Apollo mission, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, in 1975. Numerous components from previous missions were used **

Only hours after launch, the ASTP crew contacted CapCom Karol Bobko in Houston.

Stafford: Hello, Houston; Apollo.

Bobko: Apollo, Houston. Go ahead.

Slayton: All right, Bo. We got a problem. We can't get the probe out to stick that wonderful little freezer up there.

Bobko: Understand. You can't get the probe out.

Stafford: Yeah, Vance will tell you about it. Here - -

Brand: Okay, Bo. Everything in the probe removal checklist on the cue card is going - has been going great up through step 11. Step 12 is "Capture latch release, tool 7." You insert it in the pyro cover. You turn it a 180 degrees clockwise to release the capture latches. Well, here's where the problem is, and let me explain it to you. If - do you have somebody there that knows the probe that can listen?

Bobko: Roger; understand.

Brand: Now I suppose that one thing I could do is take the cover off - the pyro cover off - and I've got proper tools to do that.

Stafford: Bo, what it's coming down to is a decision we ought to make pretty soon. We've been up pretty late and this whole thing about sticking the cryo freezer up there came about because of the ventings. And either we're going to stay up another 3 or 4 hours wrestling that probe or else we're going to call it quits.

Bobko: Roger. We copy and we're talking about it right here now.

Brand: Incidentally, I stuck a pencil down in - or a pen down in there to see if I could easily move that pyro connector out of the way, and it doesn't seem to want to move.

Bobko: Understand.

Here we go again - in a scene that parallels Mission Control activity during Apollo 14, CapCom, Astronaut Richard Truly is photographed with a model of the docking probe during troubleshooting activities with the ASTP crew.


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