Nasa's Apolo Mission

NASA has released photos, videos, and audio recordings of its Apollo missions. Cap Com: We copy you down, Eagle. Narrator: So there's little left about these missions that we don't already know,except for one mystery that's been hiding in plain sight for decades: One of NASA's Apollo lunar modules may be missing.

That's right, missing. And not even NASA seems to know where it is. Houston: Engines on five, four, three, two, all engines running. We have liftoff. Dave Mosher: Where is Lunar Module 14? What state was it in? Does anybody have it? Does anybody know where it's at? Narrator: From 1962 to 1970, NASA commissioned Grumman Aircraft to build 15 space-worthy lunar modules for its Apollo program. Each one was labeled Lunar Modules 1 through 15 and cost around $150 million to make, or about $1.1 billion today. Newscaster: Charlie Brown was selected by the astronauts as the code name for the Apollo 10 command module, and his friend Snoopy was the call sign for the lunar module. Mosher: NASA launched 10 of these lunar landers into space.
Six of them landed onthe surface of the moon and brought the astronauts back. Other four were used for practices and dry runs, future missions. And there were five thatwere left on the ground.

Three of those fivethat never went to space, Lunar Modules 2, 9,and 13, are in museums, which leaves us with LM-14 and 15. Lunar Module 15... Mosher: Was another lunar lander that was being built for Apollo 20, which, of course, never happened. They turned it into scrap metal. So that leaves us withone lunar lander, LM-14.

On the Smithsonian's website, there's a page listing the lunar landers and all of their fates. Lunar Module 15 is listed as scrapped, but if you go up one row andyou look at Lunar Module 14, it says "Not Used." What that means, we don't know, and that's what started thisadventure in the first place. Narrator: To be clear, it is not easy to hide one of these landers.
Once complete, they'rethe size of a small house and weigh about 35,000 pounds. Mosher: Now, when we startedlooking into Lunar Module 14, things were a little weird. The documents that we had access to said incomplete or not used. It didn't say anythingabout it being scrapped. It didn't say it was inany institution or museum.


And so we started digging into this. Narrator: NASA and the Smithsonian didn't have evidence to its whereabouts, the Cradle of Aviation Museum didn't know, and even historians at Northrop Grumman, the original manufacturers of the lunar modules, were stumped. Mosher: But one of the expertsthat we talked to said, hey, I think it's atthe Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. We looked into that, and it was not it. It was an early prototypefrom the Apollo program, a lunar module that was neversupposed to fly into space. And then we got a lead. Sort of. Mosher: There was adocument from March 1978 that is a disposition, or a list, of everything in the Apollo program. What it was, what its code number was, and where it's located. And that document is missing Page No. 9, which is the page thatdescribes where Lunar Module 14 would be located or whathappened to it, if anything.

Yeah, it sounds exactly like some sort of Hollywood spy thriller, but this actually happened. Nobody could find this document. Even one of NASA'shistorians looked for us and couldn't locate it. And the same went forthe National Archives. We finally got some clueas to what happened to it from University ofHouston's space archive. Mosher: Hi, this is DaveMosher with Business Insider. Is this Jean? Jean: Hi. Yes, it is. Hi, Dave. Mosher: Hi. So, I heard you foundPage 9 of that document. Can you read it to me,tell me what is says? Jean: Next to LM-14, itsays "Mission Cancelled." Mosher: Mission canceled. And then is there anythingelse that it says? Jean: The next column says remarks. It says, "Deleted from program." Mosher: Deleted from program.

 It doesn't say where itwent or what happened to it? Jean: No, it does not. Mosher: OK. Narrator: So we were at a dead end. And, to be fair, thiswouldn't be the first time a moon lander has been lost to history. In 1969, the lunar lander for Apollo 10 was ejected into space as part of a dry run for Apollo 11. Newscaster: Ground contact was maintained with the ascent stage untilits batteries were depleted, some 12 hours later. Narrator: NASA didn't trackthe lander at the time, so it was missing, floatingsomewhere in space for decades. Until, in 2019, a groupof enthusiasts from the UK said they were pretty sure they found where it was floating in space. So, if those guys couldfind a lost lunar module in the vast expanse of space, why does nobody know where amoon lander on Earth has gone? Charles Duke: OK, this has got to be the greatest sight ever.

So we had pretty much given up on uncovering the truth. That was, until we got ahold of Paul Fjeld a few weeks later. He's obsessed with these lunar landers. Mosher: In fact, he worked with the Cradle of Aviation Museum to retrofit LM-13 into anApollo-style landing site within the museum. Narrator: So, here's what he had to say about our grand missing-lunar-lander mystery.

Paul Fjeld: 14 actually never really got built. I'm not gonna bet my son's life, but I'll bet a lot of money that there's not a scrap of LM-14 left. Narrator: Of course, that would explain why there's no photos of it. Mosher: The really revealing thing that Paul showed us was this progress chart from Grumman of the lunar landers thatwere under construction right before NASA canceledthe entire program, and it shows that LM-14 wasabout 1% to 5% complete, based on Fjeld's analysis. So the farthest thattechnicians at Grumman got was basically cutting outall of these pieces of metal and starting to assemblethem, weld them together, before NASA canceled the program.

We also spoke to two otherspace-flight-history experts, and they also thinkthat LM-14 was scrapped, but they're not entirely certain of that. Fjeld: I'm gonna say they would've said, look, we got a bunch of F-14s that are just starting tocome off the line here. This is what's the future for Grumman. We need all the metal that we can get. This is some lovely 2024 aluminum, 7075 structural aluminum. Can we use that on F-14s? Sure. Narrator: So LM-14's Frankensteined pieces maybe did fly, in a way. And perhaps they're in anaviation museum right now, as part of a jet. Newscaster: In this strange, metallic bird rides the ancient andendless dream of all mankind.

But we may never know for sure. Fjeld: I can't guaranteethat, you know, some guy didn't just drive it off the lot and it's now sitting in hisbasement or up in an attic that his grandkids have noidea what the h--- it is. Who knows? [laughs]