Home » Home » THIS DAY IN HISTORY: Apollo 15 Astronaut David Scott’s Feather-and-Hammer Experiment Marks 55 Years
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: Apollo 15 Astronaut David Scott’s Feather-and-Hammer Experiment Marks 55 Years
ABOVE VIDEO: Testing Galileo’s law of motion on the Moon!
August 2, 1971 – NASA astronaut David Scott conducted one of the most memorable scientific demonstrations in spaceflight history 55 years ago today during the Apollo 15 mission.
Standing on the Moon, Scott held a geological hammer in one hand and a falcon feather in the other. He then released both objects simultaneously to test Galileo Galilei’s principle that objects fall at the same rate when air resistance is absent.
Because the Moon has virtually no atmosphere, the feather and hammer dropped together and struck the lunar surface at nearly the same time.
The demonstration showed that gravity accelerates objects equally regardless of their mass, provided no significant air resistance affects their fall.
On Earth, a feather falls more slowly than a hammer because its large surface area encounters greater resistance from the atmosphere.
Scott conducted the experiment on Aug. 2, 1971, near the conclusion of Apollo 15’s third and final moonwalk. The feather came from a falcon, honoring the mission’s lunar module, named “Falcon.”
Apollo 15 was the fourth mission to land astronauts on the Moon and the first to use the Lunar Roving Vehicle. The mission featured an expanded focus on scientific exploration at the Hadley-Apennine landing site.
