EXPLORATION - What has gone before...
                       Apollo 14 page1

"...land in the hilly upland region north of the Fra Mauro crater for a stay of about 33 hours..."
Stuart Roosa, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell
Of the "Magnificant 7" Mercury astronauts, and our first American to enter space, Alan Shepard would be the only Mercury astronaut to walk on the Moon.

This plaque is located in the outside Saturn-V display of the Davidson Center for Space Exploration at the Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama...it reads:

                      SHEPARD - ROOSA - MITCHELL
Launched: January 31, 1971 - Landed: February 5, 1971 - Splashdown: February 9. 1971
"...IT'S BEEN A LONG WAY, BUT WE'RE HERE."
Alan Shepard's first words on the Moon - ten years after he made history as the first American in space.

Less than a year after the "successful failure" of Apollo 13, the mission of Apollo 14 accomplished much of what its predecessor had hoped to do.  Thanks to a new piece of equipment, a two-wheeled push cart ("modular equipment transporter") for carrying tools and instruments.  Shepard and Ed Mitchell were able to spend more time exploring the Moon's surface, venture farther from the lunar module, and collect more samples and scientific data than previous 

Plaque photograph by BLPlummer
Images courtesy NASA.

missions.  And the irrepressible Shepard made history by becoming the first man to swat a golf ball on the Moon.  Shepard's flight capped a fruitful relationship with Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center.  In 1961, Marshall's Redstone rocket carried him into space, and in 1971 Marshall's Saturn V enabled him to become the only one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts to set foot on the Moon.

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