page_title: Apollo 14
section_title: Return, splashdown and quarantine
hierarchical_section_title: Apollo 14 / Mission highlights / Return, splashdown and quarantine
caption_attribution_description: English: The Apollo 14 Command Module (CM), with astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., commander; Stuart A. Roosa, command module pilot; and Edgar D. Mitchell, lunar module pilot, aboard, approaches touchdown in the South Pacific Ocean to successfully end a 10-day lunar landing mission. The splashdown occurred at 3:04:39 p.m. (CST), Feb. 9, 1971, approximately 765 nautical miles south of American Samoa. The three crew men were flown by helicopter to the USS New Orleans prime recovery ship.
context_page_description: Apollo 14 was the eighth crewed mission in the United States Apollo program, the third to land on the Moon, and the first to land in the lunar highlands. It was the last of the "H missions," targeted landings with two-day stays on the Moon with two lunar EVAs, or moonwalks.
  The mission was originally scheduled for 1970, but was postponed because of the investigation following the abort of Apollo 13 and the need for modifications to the spacecraft as a result. Commander Alan Shepard, Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa, and Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell launched on their nine-day mission on Sunday, January 31, 1971, at 4:03:02 p.m. EST. Liftoff was delayed forty minutes and two seconds, due to launch site weather restrictions, the first such delay for an Apollo mission. En route to the lunar landing, the crew overcame a series of malfunctions that might have resulted in a second consecutive aborted mission, and possibly, the premature end of the Apollo program.
  Shepard and Mitchell made their lunar landing on February 5 in the Fra Mauro highlands – originally the target of Apollo 13.
context_section_description: Antares lifted off from the Moon at 1:48:42 pm EST (18:48:42 UTC) on February 6, 1971. Following the first direct (first orbit) rendezvous on a lunar landing mission, docking took place an hour and 47 minutes later. Despite concerns based on the docking problems early in the mission, the docking was successful on the first attempt, though the LM's Abort Guidance System, used for navigation, failed just before the two craft docked. After crew, equipment and lunar samples were transferred to Kitty Hawk, the ascent stage was jettisoned, and impacted the Moon, setting off waves registered by the seismometers from Apollo 12 and 14.
  A transearth injection burn took place on February 6 at  8:39:04 pm (February 7 at 01:39:04 UTC) taking 350.8 seconds, during Kitty Hawk's 34th lunar revolution. During the transearth coast, two tests of the oxygen system were performed, one to ensure the system would operate properly with low densities of oxygen in the tanks, the second to operate the system at a high flow rate, as would be necessary for the in-flight EVAs scheduled for Apollo 15 and later. Additionally, a navigation exercise was done to simulate a return to Earth following a loss of communications. All were successful. During his rest periods on the voyage, Mitchell conducted ESP experiments without NASA's knowledge or sanction, attempting by prearrangement to send images of cards he had brought with him to four people on Earth. He stated after the mission that two of the four had gotten 51 out of 200 correct (the others were less successful), whereas random chance would have dictated 40.
  On the final evening in space, the crew conducted a press conference, with the questions submitted to NASA in advance and read to the astronauts by the CAPCOM.
  The command module Kitty Hawk splashed down in the South Pacific Ocean on February 9, 1971, at 21:05 [UTC], approximately 900 miles (1,400 km) south of American Samoa. After recovery by the ship USS New Orleans, the crew was flown to Pago Pago International Airport in Tafuna, then to Honolulu, then to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston in a plane containing a  Mobile Quarantine Facility trailer before they continued their quarantine in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory. They remained there until their release from quarantine on February 27, 1971. The Apollo 14 astronauts were the last lunar explorers to be quarantined on their return from the Moon. They were the only Apollo crew to be quarantined both before and after the flight.
  Roosa, who worked in forestry in his youth, took several hundred tree seeds on the flight. These were germinated after the return to Earth, and widely distributed around the world as commemorative Moon trees. Some seedlings were given to state forestry associations in 1975 and 1976 to mark the United States Bicentennial.
caption: Apollo 14 landing
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