Apollo 15 landed the first car on the Moon
On this day · 30 July 1971
When Apollo 15 touched down in 1971 it carried a folding electric buggy that gave astronauts wheels on another world.
On 30 July 1971, Apollo 15 settled onto the Moon at Hadley-Apennine, carrying cargo no earlier mission had: a folding, battery-powered Lunar Roving Vehicle. Astronauts David Scott and James Irwin unpacked the lightweight buggy and, the next day, became the first humans to drive across another world.
The rover transformed lunar fieldwork. On foot, earlier crews crept a few hundred meters from the lander; on wheels, Scott and Irwin ranged kilometers across the rugged highlands, hauling tools and rock samples back to base.
The “Moon buggy” let them cover more ground and travel farther from the landing site than they ever could on foot.
Designed to operate in the airless, low-gravity vacuum, the electric rover ran on the front and rear wheels independently. Over three days, the crew logged roughly 27 kilometers of driving — turning a walking expedition into a motoring one and setting the template for the rovers of later Apollo flights.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
