Sunday, February 7, 2016

Apollo 14: Death of Edgar Mitchell, one of the twelve men to walk on the moon – Eco News .com

Published (Updated Nathalie Balbin

L American astronaut Edgar Mitchell, one of the few men ever to walk on the moon, died at age 85 in Florida, NASA announced Friday. “Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, lunar module pilot for Apollo 14, died Thursday in a

American Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, one of the few men ever to walk on the moon, died at age 85 in Florida, NASA announced Friday. “Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, lunar module pilot for Apollo 14, died Thursday in a hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida, on the eve of the 45th anniversary of the moon landing,” wrote the American Space Agency a statement.

astronaut was a member of the Apollo 14 of Cape Canaveral, Florida, January 31, 1971 with Alan Shepard and Stuart Roosa .It was the last survivor. Stuart Roosa died in 1994 and in 1998 Alan Shepard

Apollo 14 was the third manned mission to the Moon and Edgar Mitchell became the sixth man to walk on the surface of our satellite. He was in charge of steering the lunar module Antares, which landed on the moon in the Fra Mauro region of the moon. During the mission, astronauts collected 40 kilograms of lunar rock samples and conducted a series of experiments. The mission ended when astronauts traveling aboard a space capsule, arose in the Pacific Ocean February 9 1971. Edgar Mitchell was also the author of several books, including his memoirs published in 1996 ” the explorer’s Way. “

Edgar Mitchell was one of only twelve men to walk on the Moon

” Edgar was one of only twelve men to walk on the moon and he helped change the perception we have of our place in the universe, “responded the head of NASA, Charles Bolden, said in the statement.

astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, paid tribute to “another lunar pioneer” on Twitter. Born in Texas September 17, 1930, Edgar Mitchell died after a short illness, his family said at the Palm Beach Post.

This is Florida, in the southeast US, Edgar Mitchell took off January 31, 1971 aboard Apollo 14, becoming during this mission the sixth astronaut to walk on the moon. He had left the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, with his companions mission, Alan Shepard and Stuart Roosa. This is Edgar Mitchell who was responsible for driving the lunar module Antares, which landed on the Fra Mauro crater February 5, 1971.

Alan Shepard, “the first American in space “recalls NASA Edgar Mitchell was instructed to survey the lunar surface” for performing communication tests “and photograph the scene. They had taken more than 40 kilograms of lunar soil samples during a mission that broke several records at the time: “the longest distance traversed on the lunar surface, the biggest burden reduced and the longest time spent on the Moon, 33 hours, “says Nasa.

the two astronauts were also the first to broadcast television color images from the moon.

the mission was completed successfully February 9, 1971.

it is the will announced in the early 1960s by President John F. Kennedy to send man to the moon that drew towards Edgar Mitchell space, according to NASA. His flight into space, the only one of his career, “marked the culmination of my being, and what can I learn? What do we learn? This is important because I think what we’re trying to do is we discover ourselves and our place in the cosmos, yet we know nothing. We are still looking, “he said in 1997 in an interview given to the space agency.

Apollo 14 ( 4 h 03- 20 h 24) is the eighth manned mission of the Apollo program, and the third to land on the Moon. This is the first mission whose main purpose is for scientific, not in a place selected according to technical, but for its geological interest. The lunar module landed in the Fra Mauro geological formation, which was the original destination of the Apollo 13 mission that could not succeed.

The Apollo 14 Mission shows the main objective of the Apollo 13 mission which has been realized: the exploration of the geological formation Fra Mauro located west of the great Fra Mauro crater. After the first two missions “technical” Apollo 11 and Apollo 12, which demonstrated the ability to land on the moon in a controlled and precise manner, NASA now feels ready to send a mission more difficult and rugged terrain, and to a specific geological objective, requiring very good precision landing.

the geological exploration of this region is of great importance because the rocks constituting the ejecta can come from several kilometers under the surface as it was at the moment of impact, and provide valuable information about the composition of the rocks in this very early period (over 4.5 billion years). On Earth, it is impossible to find such ancient rocks, and the exploration of the Moon (whose area is preserved by the absence of tectonics and erosion) is the only way to get information about the period the formation of the Earth and the Moon (which underwent the same training mechanisms).

However, the ejecta have still been covered, for billions of years, with a layer of several meters of lunar dust and regolith. The precise geographic objective is the edge of a relatively recent and deep crater, the Cone Crater ( 300 m in diameter), which is supposed cross the regolith layer in order to have chances to find, in the particular ejecta of this crater, rocks from the impact of the sea of ​​Rains, or even the original lunar layer before impact.

in fact, the impact craters forming process is such that the deepest ejected materials are found on the edge of the crater, and proportionally far found the crater as they were shallower. In this way, by taking tektites more near the crater, it is as if the astronauts levied materials increasingly deep in the ejecta of the Sea of ​​Rains, even in the original layer. It is therefore very important that astronauts arrive as close to the crater

The crew of Apollo 14′s.

  • commander: captain Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (USN)
  • Driver control module: Major Stuart Allen Roosa (USAF)
  • Lunar module Pilot: captain Edgar Dean Mitchell ( USN)

the commander Alan Shepard, was selected among the first astronauts in 1959 and is best known as the first American in space, at the program Mercury. It is also the only astronaut program to walk on the moon. Having developed an inner ear disease, it was excluded from any mission flight and became “chief of the Astronaut Office” from November 1963 to July 1969. An experimental operation all returned his abilities, and he was assigned to Apollo 14 in August 1969. in 47 years at the time of the flight, it is the oldest astronaut to walk on the moon. (Source Wikipedia)

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