Manned by David R. Scott, Alfred M. Worden, and James B. Irwin, Apollo 15 left the Earth on July 26, 1971 and landed on the moon about four days later near Hadley Rille and the Apennine Mountains. In addition to exploring the lunar surface as done in earlier Apollo missions, through photographs, samples of rocks and soil, and experiments, the crew was also able to utilize a four-wheeled, battery-powered Lunar Roving Vehicle, which traveled as far as 5 kilometers away from the landing site, for the first time. Another particularly notable moment of the Apollo 15 mission was a televised demonstration carried out by Scott in which he dropped a feather and a hammer at the same time, both falling at the same rate in the vacuum of the moon. The Apollo 15 returned to Earth on August 7, but the trip was not without its problems. During its descent towards the planet, one of the ship’s three parachutes failed to open, causing the Apollo 15 to splash down into the Pacific Ocean at a much higher velocity than planned.