On this day in space: Feb. 5, 1971: Apollo 14 lands on the moon

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On Feb. 5, 1971, two Apollo 14 astronauts landed on the moon!

On Feb. 5, 1971, two Apollo 14 astronauts landed on the moon!

An image of where the Apollo 14 mission landed on the moon. (Image credit: NASA/All About Space Magazine)

Their descent was a little chaotic. A faulty switch was sending "abort" signals to the landing module's computer, and NASA had to reprogram the computer before they could land. Then the landing radar failed to measure the module's altitude and descent speed.

The problem fixed itself just in time, and Shepard manually landed the spacecraft right on target.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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